


A Spell of Riot

by churchkey



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: AA, AU, Addiction recovery, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Alcohol treatment, Bad Sex, Co-Dependency, Co-addiction, Delirium tremens, Established Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Original Character(s), Period Typical Homophobia, Post-War, Redemption Sex, Relapse, Relationship Problems, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, Twelve steps, marriage on the brink, original dog character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:41:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 62,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26517619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchkey/pseuds/churchkey
Summary: Of course, there was another alternative, and it came around every morning after, presenting Lew with a clear choice.Today could be the day he simply didn’t drink.__They finally deal with Lew's alcoholism.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 51
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please check the tags. Also, please know that though this is based on a lot of research on the perceptions and treatment of alcoholism in post-war America (as well as the lived experience of 8 years in an alcoholic marriage), I am not in any way an expert on addiction and am certainly not advocating any particular method of treatment. Eternal gratitude and love to Laura for talking me through every part of this, reading countless drafts, providing constant inspiration, and encouraging me to keep at it.
> 
> (And it doesn't get explicit until Chapter 3)

Dick woke with a start. The pale autumn moonlight through the window fell in a slanting rectangle across the quilt, and for a moment he just lay still, his heart racing, trying to place the terrible noise that had awoken him. A loud crash, a stumble, a succession of short, hollow thuds. Glass breaking, the skitter of paws across the hardwood, Lew cursing in surprise, like a sleepwalker who’d woken to find himself in another house entirely. In actual fact, he’d just fallen down the basement stairs. 

Walking into the kitchen, Dick found the dog, Teddy, looking back and forth between him and the open door to the basement. He stood with her for a moment, mindlessly stroking her head as he swallowed back perfunctory questions about what the hell had just happened. He knew what had happened. But when he saw the blood dripping down Lew’s forehead, his hesitation immediately disappeared. Dropping his head to the side to avoid hitting it on the ceiling joists, he quickly descended the steps to where Lew lay sprawled on his back on the concrete floor. 

“Careful,” Lew coughed, gesturing toward the jagged remnants of the broken tumbler. “Your feet.” 

Dick stepped around the broken glass and crouched next to him, placing both hands firmly on the sides of his head. There was too much blood to get a clear look at it, but in the dim light from the kitchen he could make out a dark gash starting at the top of his forehead and running about an inch across his scalp. Dick peeled off his undershirt and balled it up, pressed it tight against the wound. His mouth tightened into a worried line and he exhaled one long, pensive breath through his nose. Only then did he look into Lew’s eyes. 

“You’re gonna need stitches.”

“Fuck.”

Lew pulled his gaze away and sat up off the floor, propping his weight on the heel of his left hand. He took the shirt from Dick and pulled it away from his head, examining the bold pattern of his blood seeping into the cotton with an expression that, to Dick, seemed almost amused. Then he pressed the shirt to his head again and an intense look came into his face, like he was trying very hard to summon his resolve and was exhausted by the effort. He looked back at Dick. 

“You do it.” 

“What?”

“There’s a suture kit with the first aid stuff.” Lew tried to sit up straighter, winced, sighed. The sharp fumes on his pained exhale hit Dick like a slap across the face. “It’d take us an hour to get to the hospital, and then we’d sit around the waiting room for another hour.”

But that wasn’t the reason, and they both knew it. 

As he stood over Lew in the bathroom, carefully hooking the sickle-shaped first aid needle through the white flaps of skin on either side of the gash, feelings rolled around inside of him like billiard balls caroming off the soft felt edges of a pool table. He tried to quiet them, but they just kept rolling, smacking against each other with a satisfying ‘clack’. 

Anger. He was angry that instead of sleeping, he was cleaning up another of Lew’s messes, and probably making shoddy work of it too. Probably leave him with a nasty scar. They’d learned basic field dressing in the Army, but that had been ages ago and he’d never actually had to put the training into practice. How dare Lew ask him, how dare he get so drunk that he’d fallen down the goddamn stairs, could've broken something, could’ve killed himself. 

“How’s it look, doc?” Lew asked through gritted teeth. 

“Don’t know.” Dick’s voice was thick with studied concentration. “I’m not done yet.” 

Disgust, and the feeling upset him more than the anger. Scared him a little too. Wasn’t there an old story… He was sure Lew had told him once. Hadn’t the same thing happened to Stanhope when Lew was a boy? 

_“Pathetic,”_ he could hear Lew’s voice, the humor laced with contempt. _“Beneath the swagger and sway, he’s just a bum in nicer shoes.”_

“Those stairs are too steep. Miracle it didn’t happen sooner.” 

“Yeah.” Dick poked the needle again through Lew’s skin, pulling the edges of the gash a little closer together with the stiff black thread. “Gotta be careful with those.” 

It wasn’t stairs, it was a boat. Or a dock. He’d fallen into the water and thrashed about like a man possessed, gurgling that he needed the Coast Guard, he was drowning for god’s sake. If he’d stopped panicking he would have realized that the water was only about five feet deep. He could have touched bottom and just walked to shore, but he was too drunk, there was no reasoning with him in that state. In the end it had been Lew, just ten or eleven, hardly tall enough himself, who’d jumped in and guided him to the ladder, both hands on his ass trying to push him back up onto the deck as he groped for the outstretched hands of his equally drunken friends. 

Pathetic. 

And here he was now, shutting his eyes against the pain and the harsh light, the same boy who’d promised himself he’d never be like him, a vow he’d keep if it killed him. And he’d broken it, and it was killing him. Dick could see that plainly. What he couldn’t see was the way out from under this shadow that had fallen on them like the fog in Belgium. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t draw up a list of pros and cons or listen to his gut. There was no field manual. No maps. He couldn’t even ask his dad.

“Thanks, honey.” 

Lew’s voice sounded so frail, so tired. A part of Dick wanted to fold him in his arms, pull his head to his chest and tell him to hush now, everything was fine. Everything would be just fine. Instead he concentrated on tying off the thread and trimming it close with a dainty pair of nail scissors. The wound started to bleed again and he dabbed at it with a square of gauze. 

“Well.” He straightened up and began to gather the dirty towels and gauze wrappers. “I think you’re gonna live.” 

Lew smiled weakly and then pressed his lips together and breathed hard, his brow furrowed in anguish. He reached for Dick, but then dropped his arm listlessly to his side as he realized that both of his hands were already full. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Dick shook his head faintly and shrugged, gestures so automatic they’d lost all meaning. He searched for something to tell him, some reassurance that wouldn’t be a lie but also wouldn’t lead to a serious conversation in the middle of the night. Lew was still drunk, after all. There was no reasoning with him in this state. 

“All’s well that ends well.” 

And just as quickly as it had appeared, the contrition disappeared from Lew’s face, replaced by the inscrutable mask Dick had come to despise. _You’re not my husband_ , he always wanted to say to this interloper wearing Lew’s clothes. _Where’s he gone? I want him back._

“Get a towel for your pillow. In case it starts bleeding again.” 

Lew raised his right hand to his forehead in a bitter salute. Dick turned and left him sitting there, slumped against the sink, his eyes gone dark and distant in the stark brightness of the bathroom light. 

* * *

Lew stood at the bathroom sink, staring intently at his reflection in the mirror. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and leaned in close to assess the damage. Dried blood crusted the thick black stitches and the skin around the gash was stained a lurid mercurochrome orange. He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the jar of petroleum jelly, smiling ruefully as he unscrewed the lid. He looked inside the half-empty jar, trying to remember the last time they’d needed it. His mind drew a blank. He didn’t know whether that was because it had been so long or because he just couldn’t seem to remember things as well as he used to. He dragged his middle finger through the thick gel and dabbed gently at his wound.

Last night. He remembered that. The irony was that he wasn’t even properly drunk when it had happened. He was in that state of heightened awareness just before full intoxication, when all of his senses were more attuned to the light, the noise, the possibilities of the night. He could go anywhere, do anything. Get dressed and get the train to the city, catch a show at the Five Spot, sit on a bench in Washington Square Park with the taxicabs and weekend urgency bustling all around him. He could take a walk down the cow lane to the willow tree, climb its branches to the very top and look out on the fields and the house and the bedroom window, where Dick lay sleeping. He could wake him, they could walk together. First he needed one more drink. 

He remembered the kitchen, the cupboard above the refrigerator. Holding the bottle over his glass for a long time, waiting for the very last drops. He could exercise such heroic patience when he needed to, despite what Dick thought. But that bottle was well and truly empty; same for the one he kept stashed in the woodbox by the fireplace. He imagined the mental inventory of hiding places he must have taken then, the systematic path that led him to those dangerously steep farmhouse basement stairs, and the stumble that brought the whole careful scheme crashing down around him. 

And Dick had said nothing, could barely bring himself to look at him. What would it take, Lew wondered once again. What would make him finally confront it? He remembered lying next to him in the darkness after, how he’d longed for him to reach across the bed and touch his back. If he didn’t want to have sex with him, fine. There was nothing Lew could do about that. But he missed being touched. Dick had no idea what it would mean to him, just a hand on his back to tell him that he was safe now, he was where he belonged. A hand to remind him of who he was to Dick, and that he still loved him. That he was still worthy of love, even like this. A cool, steady hand on his restless skin.

That was all he needed.

Instead he got the back of Dick’s head and the unbearable weight of his stony silence, like an anvil on his chest. Was that what made it so hard to breathe? 

He put the jar of Vaseline back in the cabinet and examined his face in the mirror. The stitches seemed to be holding, the thick black thread blending in with his hair. Not bad for an amateur. He turned his head to examine the faint white streak running just to the right of his eyebrow to his temple. It was so faded now, someone who didn’t know it was there would need a magnifying glass to see it, but Lew could pick it out clearly. His eyes drifted down the rest of his face. The lines on his brow, at the corners of his eyes. Dick had laugh lines too, but they made him look friendly, like he came by them honestly from smiling a lot. On Lew’s face they just looked like the ravages of time. 

So many lines. The longer he stared, the more they began to look like cracks, fractures. Signs of crumbling and decay. He was suddenly taken by a strange notion that the rest of his body was covered with them too, and he unbuttoned his pajamas to check. But he found nothing unusual, just the same sparse patches of dark hair, the washed out pallor of his skin beneath them. He ran his fingertips over his knobby clavicles, into the divots between his ribs. The sensible thing to do was go downstairs and fix himself something to eat, but he felt an instinctive urge to linger there in the bathroom a little longer. He liked the closeness of the walls, how he could stand in any corner and see everything all at once without turning his head. Life was simple in the bathroom; if not for the absence of one important comfort, he might never leave. 

He sat down on the ledge of the tub and turned both handles, losing himself for a moment in the crashing and churning of the water rushing from the faucet. A sudden fear gripped him then, something about the sound, the terrible noise of all that water, fears of being swallowed up, of drowning, the mindless thrashing of his arms and legs, the last, desperate convulsing of his lungs, until everything went deathly still, and no one coming to dive in after him; no one to even notice he’d fallen in. What a horrible way to die. 

He blinked a few times, shook his head. This was normal, he told himself. He just needed something to settle down, just one little drink, two at the most. But it was Sunday. Of course, Sunday; that’s where Dick had gone. Which meant that the liquor stores wouldn’t open until noon, the nearest bars, not until Monday morning. Perhaps he could impose upon the neighbors, delightful guys, and generous too, met in the war just like he and Dick had. Mitch and Arthur, with their charming little fishing resort on the lake. The Brothers Inn, they called it, and he and Dick always got a kick out of that.

“Let’s have the brothers over for cards this weekend,” they’d say, or “give our best to your brother” when they’d run into one or the other in town. That was one way to do it. 

Their place was only about four miles, he could probably walk it in an hour. Of course, there was another alternative, and it came around every morning after, presenting Lew with a clear choice. 

Today could be the day he simply didn’t drink. 

He knew that was likely what Dick was praying for as he sat by himself on that hard bench, asking God to give his weak husband the desire, the strength, the will to resist this temptation. But that was exactly what Dick didn’t understand. God couldn’t do it. The power was his and his alone, and he’d give it up when he was good and ready. If he gave it up at all. Maybe he’d just cut back, exercise a little moderation. There was no reason he couldn’t do that.

As he leaned forward to turn off the faucet, his eyes fell on the toilet tank. A rush of excitement rose suddenly through his whole body, but he checked it; he didn’t want to get too excited. Slowly, he rose to his feet and carefully lifted the heavy porcelain lid. There it was, Glory Hallelujah! A pint bottle three-quarters full, floating serenely just behind the gasket. He peeled off the gummy layer of electrical tape he’d wrapped around the lid and lifted the bottle to his nose. The scent went straight to his brain and he closed his eyes, anticipating the relief to come. He touched the bottle to his lips and drank. 

* * *

Dick tried to pay attention to the liturgy, but his thoughts continually drifted back to the night before, to the mattress whining under Lew’s restless turning and to his own body, curled into a fetal pose on the edge of the bed. He didn’t know when indifference had become his primary method of communication. Kissing Lew goodnight used to be as regular as prayer, a routine they kept to with the same unconscious devotion. Even if one of them had already closed his eyes, they’d still find each other in the dark, the mumbled “love you”, lips bumping clumsily, sometimes missing his mouth entirely. Now he usually pretended to be asleep when Lew came to bed late, if he woke up at all. 

And he couldn’t deny that it felt good sometimes, ignoring Lew’s searching hand, answering his slurred “still awake baby?” with stoic silence. In this way, he could have his say. He could refuse to engage and thereby condone. He could satisfy the cries for justice inside his heart with the knowledge that bad deeds had been punished. Never once did he stop to wonder if Lew deserved such treatment because he knew that it would never occur to Lew to wonder the same thing about him. He believed it with a righteous certainty that grew stronger the more he turned it over in his mind, _I don’t deserve this, dammit_ , and just like that he was angry again. And on a Sunday morning, a time for rejoicing and being glad. 

The sermon text was from the Psalms, a song of confession and forgiveness, and Dick became aware of another feeling behind the anger. That was the way anger worked with him; it was never a feeling all on its own but the child of another one, and that other one now was guilt. 

_When I kept silent, my bones wasted away._

He’d kept silent, but the sin had never been his to confess in the first place. Still, he couldn’t help but ask himself if things would be different if he’d only said something. He could have demanded a change, given him an ultimatum. But he hadn’t. He’d kept silent, and secretly congratulated himself on accepting Lew for all his scars and flaws and imperfections, when what he’d actually done was turn a blind eye. At some point he’d just resigned himself to the truth that Lew wouldn’t give it up, and Dick couldn’t make him, so why try? And he knew also that when you got down to it, he was simply afraid. That Lew might try and fail, and then he’d have to really decide whether all of this was worth the trouble. Or worse, that he might ask Lew to quit drinking and he might say no, that he loved Dick, but not that much. 

But Dick could still remember how he’d roll into HQ on no sleep, squinting against the morning light, and snap back into the brilliant tactician, planning ops like he’d been born with a map in his hand. Just give him a cup of coffee and a cigarette and he was ready for action; Nix, in dirty fatigues and a three-day beard. Nix, the drunk he’d fallen in love with. Maybe that was why he’d let it go on for so long. Sometimes Dick thought he caught a glimpse of him in his periphery, the way you can see heat waves rising off a blacktop road, but only if you don’t look at it straight-on. 

And he was still pulling through, in his way. Sure, he was quieter at the breakfast table now, silently nursing his Bromo Seltzer and waving off Dick’s attempts to get some hot food in his stomach. Sure, he didn’t seem to have much interest in romance these days. But he still put in a full day’s work, wore out the knees of his blue jeans just as quickly as Dick did. Lew always pulled through for him. 

_Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity_

But deep down, he knew that it was no longer a matter of whether Lew could do his job. It touched everything now, like a troubled spirit that would not be released. Every night when he paused on the stairs, hoping for Lew to turn out the living room lights and join him, Dick felt its cold breath on his neck. As he lay alone in bed, listening to Lew going back and forth between his sunken leather chair in the living room and the basement cabinet where Dick knew he hid the extra bottles, a phantom leg brushed against his under the covers. And in the morning, when Lew lumbered down the stairs to the kitchen and dropped himself heavily into his chair at the table, Dick felt its icy fingers squeezing his heart, could almost hear that insidious whisper, _Say something, coward!_

Dick would take a sip of coffee, swallow, clear his throat. Glance up from the paper. 

_“Supposed to rain today.”_

_“Is that right?”_

__

_“We’ll see. That’s what they said yesterday too.”_

Clinging desperately to some semblance of normal life, as though the force of his insistence were strong enough to keep the farm and the house and the life they’d built together from falling into the sinkhole slowly opening beneath them. 

When the minister asked the congregation to rise for the prayers of intercession, Dick began repeating the same prayer he said every night, the words running together in one long, unbroken stream. 

_Take it away. Take it away. Take it away._

But he didn’t know exactly what he meant by that anymore, what he wanted God to take away. Lew’s desire to drink. His own fears about the damage it was causing. The pervasive sense that they’d gotten lost in the fog and were wandering farther and farther away from each other. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, at the skin stretched taut across his knuckles as he gripped the back of the pew in front of him. At the band on his finger, glinting orange in the light through the stained glass. 

_Take it away. Take it away. Dear Lord, please take it all away._

* * *

Lew woke slowly, his mind bobbing above and below the surface of consciousness like a buoy. Though he’d probably been asleep just a few minutes, he’d been deep in a dream, the same one he’d been having since the war. It wasn’t like the kind of dreams Dick still had once in a while. Instead of inspiring terror, this dream was more of an extended bout of nerves, the anxiety rising like a gathering storm, picking up strength the longer it went on. The setting varied, but the end was always the same. 

A battle had just ended and Lew was running to the front, a journey that seemed to stretch on for miles, and he had to keep running, despite his numb feet and burning thighs, despite the sharp pain in his lungs as he gasped for air. Sometimes he was on a beach; sometimes the search took him across a field or through a forest. Men were everywhere, crowding around the wounded and blocking his view. He had to ask them all; it was like a compulsion. _“Have you seen him? Did he make it? Any idea where he is? What about you - have_ you _seen him? Did he make it?”_ and on and on, until he’d asked every single man. 

And then, finally, when he was sure he was out of stones to turn over, there he’d be, just standing there chatting casually with some faceless lieutenant. 

_“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,”_ Lew would always say. 

Dick would give him one of his fleeting half-grins and a look of quiet approval. _“You found me,”_ he’d always reply. 

Lew always found him, and he supposed that’s what kept the dream from being a nightmare. 

He shivered; how long had he been lying here? He sat up and reached across the tub to turn on the hot water again. Dick wasn’t home yet, so it couldn’t have been too long. Then again, maybe he’d been asleep and hadn’t heard the door. Or maybe - it was possible. He hated to think of it and at the same time, he couldn’t pull his mind away from the thought. He was compelled by it, as though entertaining the idea might somehow ward it off. _Maybe_ , he said it to himself slowly, deliberately. Maybe this was the day Dick didn’t come home. 

And who would blame him? A part of Lew was surprised it hadn’t happened already. No one was that patient. But it made him profoundly sad to think about. He knew that without Dick, there would be nothing preventing him from drinking himself to death. And maybe that would be for the best. Dick would mourn him, of course. Harry too, probably. His family, after a fashion. But how many of them would eventually shake their heads with haughty regret and say they’d seen it coming for years, that he’d finally reaped what he’d sown. Pity he just couldn’t learn to leave the stuff alone. 

He imagined himself as a ghost trying to explain it all to Dick, how hard he’d tried, that he didn’t want to live like this but he didn’t seem to have a choice. That he hadn’t wanted to die, hadn’t done it on purpose. But he was like Marley’s ghost, doomed to witness the injustice all around him, forever denied the chance to intervene. 

Waves of self-pity began to wash over him, and soon he was crying, his shoulders shaking as the sobs wracked his body. He pressed his fingers hard to his eyelids but the tears came nonetheless, a steady stream wetting his cheeks and sliding between his lips. It went on like that for a few minutes, that feeling of everything falling apart and dissolving like snow, and then it began to fade and he could think again. He was well aware how ridiculous it all was. Weeping like a child - over what? A bad dream? What would Dick think if he found him like this? _Christ's sake man,_ he said to himself, _pull yourself together._

A cigarette would go a long way in that regard, but Dick hated it when he smoked in the house, and anyway, his cigarettes were probably all the way down in the kitchen. He’d just started working up the strength to heave himself out of the tub when he heard the back door close and Dick’s voice, soft and soothing, as he greeted Teddy. Lew smiled in spite of the fear and remorse that, just moments before, had rendered him a sniveling mess. It was that voice, the fatherly tenderness in it, the winking glimpse of a different kind of love dammed up inside of him, the sort of love that lived in both their hearts but would never be given, except to the dog. They never pretended it was the same thing, and they never acknowledged it was any different. 

A few minutes later, Lew heard the stairs creaking under Dick’s feet. He walked past the bathroom and into the bedroom, and Lew imagined him pausing at the sight of the empty bed before taking off his suit jacket and hanging it primly in the closet. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before the pull of the thin crack of light at the bottom of the bathroom door would be too strong for Dick to resist, and soon he’d come knocking, locked in an unconscious pattern that preserved his own obligation and kept Lew in a perpetual state of helplessness. Who would Dick be without his burden of concern? It used to be a warm blanket around Lew’s shoulders, but now it had begun to feel like a straightjacket.

Footsteps in the hall. A knock on the door. Lew sat up straighter and draped his arms over the edges of the tub. 

“Come in.” 

The door opened and Dick stepped around Lew’s discarded pajamas to stand with one hip leaning against the sink. He was wearing brown wool trousers and a cream colored shirt, and he’d loosened his tie enough to reveal a tiny crescent of white cotton undershirt. He smiled at Lew, but the warmth in his face quickly changed to concern.

“How’re you feeling?”

Lew shrugged one shoulder. “Been better. Been a lot worse. How was church?” 

“About the same as ever.” 

“Any miracles in the temple?” 

Dick huffed and shook his head, and Lew could tell from the dark flash in his eyes that he wanted to say more but held his tongue. He crossed his arms, rubbing his left hand up and down his right bicep. 

“You wore your ring to church?” Lew asked. 

Dick flattened his hand and looked down at his finger. “Yeah,” he said softly, and looked back at Lew. “I always do.”

They were quiet for a few moments, the only sound the gentle splashing as Lew shifted his legs in the water and thought about that. They usually didn’t wear their rings in mixed company; it was just easier than walking the minefield of raised eyebrows and loaded questions. And even though it shouldn’t have shocked him - to Dick, taking off his ring for church was probably the equivalent of lying to God - he was still surprised by how good it felt to imagine him passing the offering plate and drinking coffee in the fellowship room, all the people who’d see him wearing the ring Lew had put on his finger. 

Dick took Lew’s towel from the hook on the door and folded it over his arm. “How about we go downstairs and get you something to eat.” 

Lew smiled rakishly at him. “How about you take your clothes off and get in here with me.”

“Tub’s not big enough,” Dick said frankly. 

Lew hummed. “Why don’t you take them off all the same.” 

Banter like this was easy because there was nothing behind it. His suggestion was not meant to be taken seriously, and Dick knew that. But rather than lightening things, his ironic flirting only turned the mood somber, and suddenly Dick seemed so far away, standing there at the sink staring distractedly at the floor, lost in the mosaic pattern of the tile. Lew cleared his throat. 

“Hey Dick, you know…” He turned onto his side and rested his chin on his arm. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”

Dick looked up at him and something like affection came into his face. He moved to kneel next to the tub and put his hands in Lew’s hair, tipping his head back to get a close look at his stitches. 

“Does it hurt?” 

“Not too bad,” Lew said meekly. He closed his eyes and dropped his head into Dick’s hands. 

“Want some help washing your hair?”

“Nah,” Lew said. “I’ll let it go another day.” 

Dick nodded and let go of Lew’s head. He sat back on his heels. 

“But I’d let you do my back,” Lew murmured.

“Oh you’d let me?” Dick laughed softly as he began rolling up his sleeves. 

“Least I can do,” Lew said. “After all you’ve done for me.”

He sat up and hugged his legs to his chest, closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his bent knees. First he felt the silky tracks of the bar of soap sliding up and down his back, then Dick’s calloused palm, slick with lather, slowly tracing every ridge and muscle. The touch was gentle and soothing; better than aspirin or splashing cold water on his face. Better almost than that bottle in the toilet tank, still half-full, and what a relief that was. Dick’s hand on his back, washing away the shame and fear, rinsing him clean. Making him new. Dick’s hand on his naked skin. All he ever wanted. 

Lew sighed; Dick’s hand came to rest somewhere near his tailbone. He raised his head off of his knees to find Dick leaning in close, waiting. 

“Lew,” he whispered, his voice gone ragged with a need too long neglected. 

Lew raised his wet hand to Dick’s jaw and leaned forward, bringing their mouths together. Dick kissed him deeply, hungrily, and Lew had to break it to catch his breath. When he did, Dick sat back abruptly and looked at Lew, his shoulders dropping in disappointment. He looked so tired, and when he spoke, his voice was thin and dry. 

“You’ve been drinking this morning?” 

Lew shrunk back into the water. “Little hair of the dog,” he said nonchalantly. “Best thing for a hangover.”

Dick took a deep breath and raked his fingers through his hair. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and then dragged them slowly down his face. For a few moments he said nothing, just sat there with his palm pressed to his mouth. Was this it? Had Lew finally exhausted his legendary patience? Then Dick pulled his gaze back up to meet Lew’s, and the clarity in his eyes was like an arrow piercing Lew’s heart. 

“Honey. We need to talk.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick nurses Lew through withdrawal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the sections in this chapter features hallucinations that include wounded/dying animals. It's not gory or descriptive, but it's there. Also, a reminder that I am not an expert or a professional in alcoholism or alcoholism treatment. Detoxing at home is by all accounts a terrible and dangerous idea and should only be done under the close supervision of a doctor.

When Dick was a kid, he’d learned that there were certain words you just didn’t say, words like ‘Satan’ and ‘Damn’ and ‘Hell’, that were too vulgar or blasphemous or both, as though saying them out loud might somehow summon the frightening spirit of the awful things they represented. Looking back, he could see that the adults in his life were merely trying to spare him the fear of what he couldn’t understand, but to his child’s mind, the fear and the temptation were one and the same, and so sometimes, off by himself in the pasture behind the house, out where no one could hear him, he’d try them out, saying them as loudly as he dared. He knew nothing would happen, but it frightened him all the same. 

‘Divorce’ had become one of those words. It wasn’t that his experience of it had been so limited or that he had any particular objection to it. He’d even celebrated Lew’s first one, feeling not one shred of guilt or shame as they’d made love that night, the blood quickening in his veins at the touch of this new freedom. Neither did it have anything to do with the fact that they weren’t actually, that is, technically, married - although he knew what would happen if he went home that year for Christmas and told his family that he and Lew had decided to divorce. His mother would heave a patronizing sigh and ask in a calm voice if he wasn’t perhaps being a little dramatic, trading knowing glances with his sister as she rearranged the settings at the table. 

It was just that divorce had always been something that happened to other people, and he couldn’t help but see it as a mark of failure, a concept which had never sat well with Dick Winters. Despite this, he couldn’t stop thinking about it as they sat across from each other at the kitchen table that Sunday morning, wondering if he’d look back and see this as the moment when everything began to unravel, the juncture that put them on a different track, each heading off in a new and unknown direction. If he could bring himself to say the word out loud. If he were brave enough to pull the switch.

Lew was slumped casually in his chair, idly spinning the lazy susan and avoiding eye contact. He seemed both defiant and resigned, like a teenager caught stealing hubcaps. Old enough to take his licks, but lacking the maturity to do it with grace. Dick didn’t like the role it cast him into. He wanted the decision to be one they made together, and he worried that wherever they ended up, Lew would feel he’d been railroaded. That he’d see Dick’s ultimatum not for the act of love that it was, but as some gross injustice inflicted upon him by an impersonal judge far removed from his suffering, as though Dick weren’t suffering right along with him. 

Sitting up so straight that even his shoulders touched the chair back, Dick folded his hands and rested them on the table. He inhaled deeply, holding the breath for one silent, suspended moment before letting it out again. 

“It’s time to give it up, Lew.” 

One corner of Lew’s mouth rose in a caustic smirk. “What, hiding it in the basement?”

But Dick was too old for this game. They both were. He placed one hand firmly on the lazy susan, stopping it mid-spin. 

“You could have died.”

Lew just looked at him for a moment and then slowly straightened up, hooking his arm around the back of his chair. He turned his head to look out the window. Clouds had begun to drift in from the north and the wind had picked up, blowing little scraps of dried corn husks across the lawn. 

“I’ll cut back,” he said finally, but the words sounded hollow and rehearsed. Lew had made that promise before, and it had always turned out the same. He’d start out blithe and confident, with a strict set of rules for himself, which he’d gradually relax as the weeks went by, constantly moving the goalposts until he was right back where he’d started. 

“No.” Dick shook his head. “Not good enough.” 

He saw the muscles of Lew’s jaw tighten, his throat flex as he swallowed hard, still staring out the window.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Lew said quietly. 

“You’ve got to try.” Dick’s voice grew louder and more insistent. “You’ve got to at least do that much, or I can’t - ” 

Lew looked back at him, a strange combination of shock and anticipation lighting up his face. He waited, but Dick couldn’t bring himself to finish it. Here it was, his chance to finally wrench them free of the apathy that had kept them chained and bound for so long, and he’d frozen in the door.

“You can’t what?” 

There was no rancor or bitterness behind Lew’s words, only understanding. After everything, Lew still understood him better than anyone. Dick suddenly caught a glimpse of the sucking void his absence would create, and he knew that even if he did say it, even if Lew wouldn’t blame him for it, it would never be more than an idle threat. He sighed, feeling what remained of his courage flow out of his body on his long, ragged breath. 

“I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore.” 

A faint, sad smile fluttered briefly across Lew’s face and then disappeared. He nodded slowly, as though finally resolving some deep moral dilemma. 

“It’s not gonna be pretty.” 

“It’s alright,” Dick said. “I’ve seen worse.”

Lew just tipped his head to the side and tucked his chin, looking at Dick like he was so naive he pitied him for it. 

“Oh, Dick,” he said wistfully, “you have no idea.” 

Looking back, Dick realized that Lew had tried to warn him, and that he should have listened, or at least thought about it for a little while before dismissing it out of hand. But at the time, he’d felt certain that whatever they were in for, it couldn’t be worse than what they’d already been through, what they’d survived precisely because they’d had each other. That basic fact hadn’t changed. 

Later, as they walked through the house collecting bottles, Dick was filled with a sort of turbulent energy he hadn’t felt since the war, in those frenetic sleepless hours before launching an assault. It should have scared him, all the hiding places he’d never known about, the depth of addiction that all those empty bottles represented. But his mind was already on the siege to come, arming himself against an enemy he was certain didn’t stand a fighting chance against the two of them, together. 

When he’d left to run out for more aspirin and food that would be gentle on the stomach, Lew was curled up with Teddy on the sofa, sipping Nestea and reading _The New Yorker_. Perhaps they’d get lucky and avoid the worst, Dick thought as he drove to town. Perhaps Lew would surprise even himself. At that point he’d imagined withdrawal as something along the lines of the flu; long spells of lying around in bed bored to the back teeth, marked by brief periods of acute discomfort. By the time he got home, it had already begun to set in. 

He found Lew in the kitchen, unsteady on his feet, one hand gripping the edge of the sink and the other hovering out in front of him like he didn’t quite understand what had just happened. At his feet, a drinking glass lay in a puddle of water on the linoleum. 

He looked up at Dick and in his eyes, Dick saw something he’d only seen there once before. Fear, confusion, bewilderment; it evoked a flood of pity in his heart and he quickly dropped the grocery bags on the table and went to him. 

“I just wanted some water,” Lew tried to explain, gesturing down at the floor. His hand was shaking. 

“It’s alright,” Dick said softly, crouching to pick up the glass and set it on the counter. “I’ll get you some water.” 

Gripping Lew’s trembling hand in his, Dick guided his steps around the puddle and toward the stairs. Leading him up to the bedroom, a sense of peace began to wash through him, and the tightness he’d been holding in his chest began to loosen its grip. It was a lesson he’d learned over and over throughout his life, when horrible imaginings had him nervous and scared. The thing itself was never as bad as the anticipation of it. Now that they’d set their feet firmly on this course, he was ready to follow wherever it led, fully confident they’d emerge from the darkness all the stronger. 

Lew was right; he had no idea.

* * *

The worst thing about withdrawal wasn’t the headache that started behind his eyes and radiated through his skull, the pain echoing in his brain on every thunderous heartbeat. Nor was it the nausea that constantly threatened to empty his stomach in the most violent fashion, at the same time as a gnawing hunger deep within tormented him with cravings only whiskey could satisfy. Nor was it even the constant, pervasive anxiety that made his hands shake and his veins throb, and that oppressive feeling in his chest, like someone had drilled holes in his heart and poured acid into them. 

The worst thing about withdrawal was that no one ever listened to him. 

Lew had tried asking nicely, hoping Dick would trust him, understand exactly why he didn’t want him to see him like this. He’d tried argument, presenting a list of increasingly logical reasons why it was best for Dick to just leave him alone. And when those tactics hadn’t worked, he’d begged, actually prostrated himself at Dick’s feet and pleaded with him not to open that door. Dick had just patted him on the shoulder and told him to get back in bed, he’d be up in a few minutes with some toast and milk. 

His head itched. He scratched at his stitches and felt his fingers become sticky with blood. He wondered if Dick had even heard him earlier, if he’d considered how much he was asking of Lew. How much it would cost him in dignity and self-respect to have Dick see him in this condition. The water spilling down the backs of his fingers as he tried to drink, the vomit on his pajamas, the stumbling journeys to the bathroom. Not making it to the bathroom. The convulsions and hallucinations and unbearable humiliation of being a burden to him. Dick didn’t understand that now, but he would, and he’d never look at Lew in the same way ever again. 

The delirium hadn’t gotten to him yet; he still had enough sense to regret fully that he’d ever given his consent to this asinine and frankly dangerous plan. He’d been hoping Dick would give him an unequivocal choice, _“it’s me or the booze, Nix”_ , which would be no choice at all. That would make it easier, somehow. He’d even known what his response would be, could see himself sitting back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. He’d smile cooly and his dark gaze wouldn’t waver.

_“What the hell took you so long?”_

He’d been expecting it for a while now and had even begun to feel relief in anticipation of it. Though it might surprise Dick to hear it, he really did want to quit. But experience had taught him that wanting it wasn’t enough. He needed something big and bold to pick him up and shake him out of this exhausting cycle of resentment and remorse. He needed to submit to a power that was stronger than his addiction, and Dick had to be that irresistible force. He had to crash into this oldest immovable object between them with everything he had, because it was simply too much for Lew on his own. Something had to give. Whether they’d survive it, well. That remained to be seen. 

It didn’t help that Dick kept threatening to call the doctor if he didn’t start eating soon, or if he had another seizure, or if the fever didn’t break. The first time he’d wondered aloud whether it were best to just go to the hospital, Lew had raved at him, balled up his fists and begged Dick not to do it. Something about the vehemence of his protest, or perhaps just the tightness of his hold on Dick’s shirt, tugging it down his chest, stretching the fabric as he collapsed back onto the bed, gave Dick pause. 

“Alright, settle down,” he’d said with resignation. “You can stay right here.”

Dick hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen the beds lined up like graves, everything lifeless in the pallid institutional light. It was just after he’d returned from the war, about a month into a spree that had been particularly destructive, even for him. His neighbor had come over to check on him after she’d noticed all the lights in his house were still on well past midnight (and what she was doing up at that hour, no one ever asked her) and called the police, who took him to the hospital, where they’d carted him off to a locked ward with the other drunks and paranoid schizophrenics and lunatics and everyone else the city didn’t know what to do with. 

It had taken two nurses to restrain him; he remembered waking up to a pair of burly arms pressing his shoulders to the bed, another at his feet as a doctor shot something into his arm. He’d never forget the look of cruel enjoyment in the nurse’s eyes or the clinical detachment in the doctor’s voice as he’d tried to soothe him. 

“That’s it son, there’s a good boy.” 

Lew had wanted to tell him the he wasn’t his fucking son, he was nobody’s son, but the sedative had already begun to take effect. It was the most terrified he’d ever felt in his life, and the most alone too. He left against their advice, as soon as he was well enough to stand. At that point he’d been without a drink for nearly forty-eight hours. On his way out of the ward, the nurse who’d held him down had waved and said “see you next time!” 

Next time. Maybe for those other guys in the beds next to him, the ones raving maniacally and fighting imaginary dragons. They just didn’t have the constitution for it. He could hold his liquor, had fought a goddamn war on his liquor. He was still adjusting to civilian life, after all; this was just a stumble. He’d get it under control and show them all. He’d never be back. 

That was when he’d begun to think of whiskey as medicine, and started taking it in regular doses rather than all at once. He’d managed for years like that, never getting very tight, except on weekends, and some nights when he was feeling especially sorry for himself or especially put upon, mistreated and overlooked by a world largely indifferent to his struggle. It was pain management and he enjoyed it about as much as one enjoys swallowing aspirin. 

But there was a time… he could still remember it, when whiskey had been a friend, young and lusty, good company in the bar with the other fellows and the smoke curling above their heads, a thick-biceped man like the factory worker in the Seagram’s ad, broad shoulders tapering to a trim waist, taut curve of buttocks, the sturdy thighs. Men at the bar as the hours wore on, dropping hints for him to pick up, if he liked. If he were game, if the fellow were kind, if the night allowed. A certain glint in his eye, the way he drummed his fingers on the bar. Following him to a hotel or a third floor walk-up or a men’s room, or not. Or just staying there in the bar with the men and the smoke and the warm laughter, a fellowship of strangers to beat back the cold. 

Whiskey, the handsome man in the Seagram’s ad. His friend. Sweetly sharp fumes wafting up from his glass, the bite on his tongue, the heat as he swirled it around in his mouth, the relief when he finally swallowed and felt that warmth flowing through his chest, spreading in his stomach and down his legs. He felt it in his whole body and so that’s where he missed it too, where he longed for it. And if he had a bottle right now he’d drink and drink until he got his fill, which would be never. He would always want more, would never be satisfied, and this wanting more would torture him and he’d just keep trying to fill that hole, keep knocking them back in a futile, neverending chase. One wouldn’t be enough, or two, or ten, or one hundred. He’d never have enough until he was dead. 

Just one. To take the sting out. Dick, please. It hurts. Everything hurts so bad, just let me have one, just one, Dick. Please. 

“I’ll bring you more aspirin, but you have to eat something.”

The light through the window was faint and hazy; morning or sundown? He wasn’t sure. He looked up at Dick, standing next to the bed in work clothes. 

“Seconal.”

Dick’s rough palm on his forehead, smoothing back his hair. 

“I’m afraid we’re all out of Seconal, honey.”

“Paraldehyde, then.” Lew opened and closed his mouth, flicking his tongue over his dry lips. “Little white pills. Check the medicine cabinet.”

He closed his eyes again. Dick’s cool hand on his cheek felt so nice that for a moment, he forgot his agony. 

“Alright, I’ll go check.” 

Lew had no conception of how long he was gone for or if he even left the room at all, but soon he felt Dick’s arm around his shoulders, propping him up as he held out his open hand. 

“Found it?” Lew asked. 

“Sure did.”

Lew looked at the tiny white tablets in Dick’s palm, summoning all the strength he had to lift his arm, move his hand to take them, one by one, and place them on his tongue. Dick held the water glass to his lips as he drank. 

“I’ll be back to check on you in an hour,” Dick said as he stood to leave.

“Close the door,” Lew muttered feebly after him, but Dick left it open. 

He dropped back down on the bed, groping at the tangled mess of sheets he’d kicked off in his sleep. Aspirin. Did Dick think he was an idiot? _“Sure did!”_ As if Lew wouldn’t know the difference. He slipped back into another fever dream with one angry thought tromping through his pounding head.

_I married a fucking liar._

* * *

The colors of harvest would not be ignored. Even as Dick drifted along in the endless current of work that the season required, he would find his gaze drawn up from his hands and out across the fields. At the sky, cool blue and distant above bluffs thick with trees. At the hills, mottled green and yellow and orange and red, colors that seemed to shift and change before his eyes. At the fields, those neat rows of corn turned golden by the autumn sun, the dry stalks that swished and rattled in the wind. That was harvest time, overwhelming in its abundance. Even if you weren’t seeking it, even if you had other things on your mind, it would find you and make you take notice. 

He’d just finished raking the hay and was headed back to the barn to swap out the rake for the baler when a murmuration of starlings caught his attention. He watched the mass expand and contract, flowing first in one direction and then another, until they disappeared over the horizon. Lew loved the starlings. Dick smiled faintly to himself as he thought of how he’d drop whatever he was doing to watch them swoop and dive, explaining to Dick why they did it, how what looked so aimless and chaotic was actually a careful design to trade intel on food and predators, to keep each other safe and warm. Dick thought it sounded like an army, and every year when they returned, that’s what he’d call them, the army of starlings, come to remind them that the nights were getting longer, the time for keeping each other safe and warm would soon be upon them. 

But he couldn’t think about winter. They had two hundred acres of hay yet to bale and deliver, and four hundred and sixty acres of corn to harvest and dry and haul to the elevator, and the grain bins to clean, and the cutter teeth to sharpen. But he couldn’t even think about that, because he had the sheets to wash and the sick pail to empty and the sweat-soaked pajamas to change out for dry ones. 

He was sleeping now, finally. Dick’s body still ached from sitting up all night in the chair next to the bed. Even if he’d been comfortable enough to sleep, Lew’s incoherent outbursts would have prevented him from drifting off for too long, and so he’d just sat there, sometimes reading the newspaper by the light of lamp on the nightstand, but mostly just watching Lew, pressing a cold washcloth to his forehead, putting him back to bed when he lunged for the window. Second-guessing the whole thing, legitimately worried that the combination of his ignorance and Lew’s stubborn refusal to go to the hospital might actually kill him. And praying. He’d certainly done his share of that too. By dawn, the fever had broken and whatever monstrous visions Lew had been seeing must have faded back into the dark corners of his memory, because he was sleeping. Finally. For Dick, the day was only beginning. 

He backed the tractor into the open door of the barn. Inside, the cold silence enveloped him, thick and dark as the haunting emptiness he felt all the time now within himself. If only he’d stop drinking… How many times had he thought it to himself over the past few years? Surely the number was too high to count, and maybe it wasn’t quite that simple. But as Dick reflected on everything they’d lost, all the changes for the worse, they all had that one simple thing in common.

But he used to be able to handle it; that’s what Dick couldn’t understand. They used to sit in the living room in the evenings, playing round after round of cribbage until they could scarcely keep their eyes open. After the supper dishes had been washed and put away, Lew would take the bottle down from the cupboard above the fridge as Dick got the fireplace going and they’d sit together for hours, remembering and making plans. 

Or long days out in the fields, they’d find a rhythm together and wouldn’t need to speak at all, achieving a synchrony they hadn’t shared since the war. He could see it so clearly. Guiding the combine slowly up and down the rows, Lew following a few yards behind on the tractor, pulling the grain cart. Always keeping pace with the auger so nothing was wasted. Every once in a while Dick would look over his shoulder through the window of the cab. Lew’s eyes would shift from the straight line ahead of him to glance up at Dick and share a brief, satisfied smile. He’d be filled with such happiness in those moments, such love and pride and contentment. The Good Life wasn’t out there somewhere beyond their reach anymore. It was right here. They’d taken it on their own terms, and if he ever forgot that, he’d think of that smile, those dark eyes shining bright in the dust kicked up from the tractor. They were all the reminder he’d ever need. 

So much had changed. Farm work was never easy, but it seemed like it had only gotten harder. Everything was harder now, and it all went back to Lew’s drinking. Every fight they’d had, every wound they’d inflicted, all flowed from that one bottomless source. More than anything else it had taken from them, Dick felt the loss of purpose as deeply as if he’d lost a part of himself, and perhaps he had. The truth was that life was only easy and nice when Lew was in a good mood, and it was hard when he wasn’t. Depending on the mood, it could be downright unendurable. Therefore, all of Dick’s energy now went into maintaining that equilibrium. When it fell out of balance, he shut down and removed himself, unable to face their shared failure. 

But it was exhausting. How long could he keep doing it? How many more times could he make excuses, missing holidays and birthdays and lying to his mother’s face? Not letting Lew bait him when he was spoiling for a fight, just to have another reason to get drunk and blame Dick for it rather than look a little closer for the cause of his own misery. Believing Lew when he promised to stop after two, and then having to leave the party early again, apologizing all the way to the car. They were lucky they still had any friends at all, lucky that Arthur and Mitch were even speaking to them after that day on the lake last summer. 

If only he’d stop drinking, then maybe they could get back to that time when waking up next to each other felt like such a rare and precious gift that they hardly let themselves get used to it for fear it might suddenly be snatched from their hands. The cribbage board in the firelight. The hypnotic path of starlings across the autumn sky. The Good Life. 

Dick walked out of the barn toward the towering rows of corn at the edge of the yard. It had been a good year for corn, a warm spring followed by a long, temperate summer. Rain every few days, but not too much. The fields were looking better than they ever had, better than last year even, when they’d gotten one hundred bushels to the acre, their best season yet. Dick twisted an ear of corn off its stalk and pulled back the husk, remembering their first meager harvest, scarcely enough to break even that year. That precarious, wonderful year, when they’d pooled their chips and cashed it all on in a dream five years in the making. 

They’d bought the property with a VA loan and the equipment with the balance on Lew’s trust, or as much of it as he’d been able to wring out of the trustees. Dick had only heard Lew’s version of the board meeting, so he didn’t know whether Lew had actually threatened to sue or merely groveled, but in the end he’d walked away with a check for thirty thousand dollars, renouncing any future claim to the Nixon family fortune for the price of a combine and a couple of John Deeres. 

They couldn’t have done it without Harry, who’d taken off work on only a couple of hours’ notice, hit the road without even packing a bag. He remembered working all through the night, and when the rows were finally clear and the grain bins full, they'd sat on the porch together, Lew and Harry drinking beer from stout dark bottles as morning broke over the empty fields. He'd come back to help every year since; Dick got the impression that he looked forward to it just as much as they did, even though all he got for his hard work were a few dinners at the cafe in town and a couple days away from his kids. 

When he’d called the day before to see if they had any idea yet when they’d need him, Dick had just gotten Lew back into bed after a disastrous attempt at bathing him. He’d refused to get in the tub, mumbling something about a grave. He wouldn’t even agree to a shower, and Dick wasn’t confident he’d be able to stand on his own for long anyway, so in the end he’d just sat Lew down on the tile and sponged him off with a washcloth. Everything had gotten wet - the floor, the rug, the towels, Dick’s pants. Another mess to clean up. 

Harry’s voice had come as such an unexpected comfort that within minutes Dick was confiding everything, telling him all about the fall and the stitches and finding Lew drunk in the bathtub the morning after. Harry had listened patiently, waiting until Dick had finished to ask how Lew was doing. 

“He’s alright,” Dick said. “He’ll have an ugly scar, but he’ll be alright.” 

The line went quiet for a moment. Dick could practically hear Harry shaking his head through the phone, the internal muttering of a man at the end of his rope. They’d had this conversation before. Dick knew what was coming. 

“What about you?” Harry finally asked. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Yeah, you sound great, pal.” 

His voice was tense and angry, like he was winding up for a punch. Dick pressed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose, pinching the skin between his eyebrows until it hurt. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know how to help him anymore.” 

He heard Harry take a sharp breath through his nose. 

“Well you know how I feel about it.”

“I know,” Dick said, his voice rote and lifeless. “I tried.” 

“You’ve got to get tough with him,” Harry insisted. “You’ve got to sit him down and say it clearly, ‘I’m leaving you if you don’t cut this out’. And then do it. It’s the only thing that’ll get through to him now.”

Dick sighed, the air leaving his lungs on one long, exhausted breath.

“I can’t do it, Harry.” 

“Dick, I don’t think you understand -”

“What if it were Kitty?” Dick broke in abruptly. It must have caught Harry off-guard because he took his time in answering. 

“What?” 

“If it were Kitty,” Dick said calmly. “If she had a problem. Could you ever leave her?” 

“That’s different, she’s my -” 

“Your wife?” 

Another heavy pause on the line. Dick could hear the electric hum of the invisible current connecting them. The silence only seemed to amplify their uncertainty, and for a brief moment he saw them for what they were: no longer warriors or killers, just two men approaching middle age, facing a problem they couldn’t solve. 

“No, you’re right,” Harry said. His voice had softened, become almost apologetic. “I couldn’t leave her.” 

“He needs me,” Dick said, and that was the final word. 

That had been yesterday morning, before Lew had started seeing things that weren’t there, shouting his insistent, raving nonsense about something dead in the corner, or outside the window, or Dick himself, a ghost, a walking corpse. There was nothing Dick could say to convince him that these terrible things were all in his head, that they couldn’t hurt him. All he could do was hold Lew’s arms down and wait for it to pass. 

He’d had lucid moments too, and these he mostly spent apologizing to Dick or begging him for a drink, and Dick was almost tempted. If it would get him back on his feet in time for harvest. If it would take away this pain that tore at Dick’s heart to witness. If it would bring back those nights by the fire. 

The sun was low on the horizon by the time he’d closed up the outbuildings for the night, the gravel crunching under his boots as he walked back to the house. Teddy greeted him at the door as she always did, leaning the whole of her weight against his shins so heavily he had to take a step back to keep from stumbling. 

“Hi girl,” he said in a soothing voice, scratching her behind her ears. “You been taking care of Daddy for me?” 

Upstairs, he found Lew lying on his stomach, one arm draped over the side of the bed. Teddy went to him and sniffed his face, nudging her nose against his ear. Lew opened his eyes, smiled slowly and lifted his hand to pat her head. 

“Pretty girl,” Lew murmured, nuzzling his forehead into her russet fur for a moment before rolling over onto his back. 

Dick knelt down by the bed and touched the back of his hand to Lew’s forehead. He felt hot. 

“I think the fever’s back.” 

Lew turned his head and closed his eyes, and Dick realized he was shivering. He pulled the blankets back up over his body, tucking them around his shoulders. 

“Honey,” he said seriously, patting him lightly on his stubbled cheek. “Hey. Look at me.” 

Lew opened his eyes again. They were cloudy and that look of frightened confusion had returned. 

“I need you to eat something.” 

Lew nodded. 

“Yeah?” Dick asked, hopeful. “You think you could eat some soup?” 

With more effort this time, Lew nodded again. “Soup.”

But as Dick stood to leave, he felt Lew’s hand around his wrist, pulling him back to the bed. 

“Don’t - not yet.” Lew’s voice was weak and plaintive. “Stay with me.” 

Dick looked down at him and really saw for the first time what he’d been reduced to. His stringy hair and ashen skin and rumpled pajamas. The crust around his dry lips, the shadows under his eyes. He couldn’t explain why, but in his need, in his brokenness, Lew struck him as being just as beautiful as the day they’d met. In a different way, certainly. For different reasons. But beautiful all the same. 

“Alright,” Dick said to him. “I’ll stay with you a while.” 

He lay down on the bed behind Lew and wrapped an arm around his waist, thinking that maybe if he held onto him tight enough, it might stop him from shaking. He pressed his lips to the nape of Lew’s neck. 

“I’m staying with you,” he whispered, his breath cool against Lew’s hot skin.

* * *

“They must be tired,” he’s thinking as he watches them run out to their positions again. It’s so hot today, they must be thirsty, must be tired, must be angry at him for giving this order, only following orders, just the messenger. What’s the score Harry? Not keeping score. What inning is it? Can’t remember, bottom of the sixth maybe, no it’s the seventy-sixth, in seventeen seventy-six, in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, hot like that day last summer on the lake, Dick and Artie taking turns diving off the pontoon while he and Mitch, _stop touching him_. Is that Liebgott? He’s so young. They’re just kids. We’re all young here, we all take our turn at the plate, where’s your bat? You’re up next, Lewis. 

He hears a sound, the dull thwap of knuckles, fist city, Guarnere, Philly, Liberty Bell, no it can’t be Guarnere, maybe Compton, maybe he’ll finally get what’s coming to him, the crack of Buck’s fist across his jaw and everyone will say he deserved it, well he did. He touches his face; hot but not swollen. The sound again, the ominous slap of leather, it’s Martin pounding the palm of his mitt as Webster walks to the plate. But no. The diamond is empty now. Harry, where have they gone, I didn’t give the order - Harry? 

“Yeah, he said to tell you to hang tough. Kitty sends her love too.” 

Kitty. Wedding present from Hitler, der Fuhrer, Dear John, Dear Mr. Nixon, we regret to inform you, verification of dissolution, name of petitioner, date of decree. DIVORCE. Even in defeat, Nix, look at them, even in defeat, they march with such pride, such pride, have some pride in yourself, for god’s sake Lew. Pride, the pride of the Yankees, Gary Cooper, friendly witness, I am not now, nor have I ever been -

“... moisture meter this morning, thirty percent. That’s why you’ve got to get better, I can’t do it by myself. Lew? You still with me?” 

Lew’s tongue felt rough as sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. He blinked his eyes open. His blurry surroundings came into focus all at once, like changing lenses on an eye test. Dick was sitting in the chair next to the dresser with his legs stretched out long and crossed at the ankles. In the corner behind him lay a dark heap that Lew didn’t recognize. A pile of laundry, perhaps. Four nights of soiled pajamas. His eyes found Dick again, who was holding something out to show him. It was an ear of corn. 

“See?” he said, rubbing his fingertips up and down the hard, puckered ridges of the dried kernels. “Won’t be long now.” 

Lew struggled to lift his heavy body off the mattress, propping himself on one elbow. Dick sprung to his aid, stuffing a pillow behind his back. In his periphery, Lew saw the dark lump in the corner shudder. 

“What do you need, sweetheart?” Dick found his hand under the covers and took it in both of his. “Are you hungry? You want some more orange juice?” 

Lew shook his head. His eyelids fluttered as he tried to keep them open. He whispered a word, the only word he knew in that moment. 

“What?” Dick leaned in closer. 

“Baseball.” 

“Baseball?” Dick’s head swiveled to look at the radio on the dresser. “You want me to turn on the game for you?” 

Lew shook his head again and moaned in quiet frustration. “Baseball,” he repeated. “Liebgott. Just kids.”

Dick’s breath on his cheek, the sudden shadow of his broad shoulders blocking the light from the window. The deep rumble of the milk tanker as it made its daily rounds. The lump in the corner. 

The deep rumble of the engine, the jolting, bumping, losing his balance, rattling his teeth, _STAND UP!_ smokescreen, excessive ground haze, where’s the goddamn drop zone, _HOOK UP!_ anti-aircraft power significantly stronger than previous estimate, four okay three okay two okay _ONE OKAY!_ we’re hit, four hundred feet, red light _WE’RE HIT_ red light, jump, you son of a bitch, GO - 

Dark in the bedroom now, but how can he possibly sleep with that ghastly orange glow outside the window? The plane... It’s there, he can see it. The deep scar ripped into the earth, the fire roaring from the fuselage, lighting up the cabin, their faces - they’re still alive in there, we have to help them, Dick. Unlock the window, unlock the fucking window, Dick!

He can’t move his arms. Why can’t he move his arms? Why is the laundry still shaking? Is it crying? Someone’s crying, loud, mindless howling echoing through his head, watch your head, come on big guy, back to bed, there’s nothing outside the window. But the crying, like a wounded animal, wild cats in heat, the time he ran over the rabbit den with the hay cutter, bloodcurdling, their screams, babies crying, “she won’t stop crying”

Dick pacing back and forth at the end of the bed, bouncing a bundle of blankets in his arms. “She won’t stop crying, Lew.” Agitated, red-faced, panic-stricken. So unlike him. “I don’t know what to do, I think we should call the doctor.” Holding her up to his face, touching his cheek to her head. “God, she’s burning up.” Voice tight with anguish. “What should we do?” 

“The doctor, call the doctor.” 

“You want me to call the doctor?” 

He opened his eyes. Dick was kneeling by the bed again. 

“Lew? You want the doctor?” 

He just stared at Dick for a moment, trying to remember where he was. He looked at the nightstand. The little glow-in-the-dark hands of the alarm clock read 11:45. 

“Not for me,” he mumbled. “For the baby.” 

Dick’s hand behind his head, the edge of the glass against his lips. The water, cool and clear as it dribbled down the corners of his mouth. The water. Dick. He drank until the effort exhausted him and then dropped back down onto the bed. 

Sing her a lullaby, Dick, she likes it when you sing to her. Sail baby sail, out across the sea, is you ain't my baby, can’t give you anything but love baby, _Happy Birthday baby, I’m right here baby_ , just kids, they were all just kids. 

Everything was quiet and still in the bedroom now. Lew raised his head off the pillow. Dick was slumped in the chair, resting his chin against his shoulder. Finally, he could find out about the dark heap in the corner. He dropped one leg carefully over the side of the bed, lowered his body to a crouch. Holding his breath, he army crawled around Dick’s chair, across the floor and to the corner. He was right; it _was_ moving. Trembling as it rose and fell, and if he leaned in close, he could hear it whimper. The moonlight through the window was pale and weak, but it was enough to give dimension to the shape. It wasn’t dark at all, more of a russet color. He looked closer and saw the round of her skull, the line of her nose tucked close to her chest. A pair of lifeless, floppy ears. 

“What are you doing in the corner, girl?” 

He reached out, buried his hands in her thick fur, but it was cold and wet. He held them up to the light. Blood. 

“Teddy? Oh god, what happened?” 

His hands shook as he smoothed the matted fur back to find the source of the blood, if he could just find the wound, apply enough pressure… He fell back when he saw her belly, the deep gash across her middle, the circle of blood expanding around her. His stomach lurched. He turned away from her just in time and was sick on the rug. 

He began to cry. He hovered over her frail body, his shoulders shaking as he mournfully repeated her name, “Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.” But it was no use. Her shaking stilled and her eyes went cloudy, and Lew knew that she was dead. The realization came to him slowly at first, and then all at once, and he began to scream, shouting her name over and over, as though the next one might bring her back. 

“Lew?” Dick sat up in his chair. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong?” 

“She’s dead!” Lew shouted at him, gesturing wildly at the corner. 

“Who’s dead?” Dick looked at the corner and then back at Lew, his brow scrunched and eyes wide in alarm. 

“Teddy!” Lew pointed again at the heap in the corner. “Someone came in here while I was sleeping. We have to bury her Dick, right now.” 

Lew reached for her again but Dick caught his arms, pressed them down against his sides. He fought it for a few seconds but quickly gave up, falling back against Dick’s chest, into the circle of his arms, into the shelter of his calm, quiet voice. 

“It’s alright, there’s nothing there.” He felt Dick’s breath ruffling his hair. “Just you and me, Lew. Nothing else.” 

As they knelt there together, Lew’s sudden grief faded to a vague sense of shame. Even worse, he couldn’t remember the extent of his foolishness, how many of these episodes Dick had watched from his chair by the bed. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning his head away as Dick pulled the covers up over his chest. 

“Just try to get some rest.” Dick kissed his cheek and then sat back down in his chair.

* * *

When he woke up a few days later, Lew felt a familiar stirring deep in his stomach, a slow, urgent pressure, and he rolled to his side to make sure the sick pail was close at hand. It was then that he realized that the feeling he was experiencing was not nausea but arousal, and that he had an erection. 

Laughing softly at himself, he rolled back onto his back and grinned up at the ceiling. He slid his hand under the sheet, his hips twitching involuntarily when his palm came to rest against the stiff bulge beneath the thin cotton of his pajamas. He pressed harder, and sucked in his breath at the sudden cascade of pleasure surging through his groin, down his legs, even reaching his toes. 

“Dick,” he murmured, his voice low and sultry. “Baby, you’ve gotta feel this.” 

But Dick wasn’t there. Lew opened his eyes and turned to look at the empty space next to him in bed. He lifted himself to sit, leaning back on his palms, and checked the clock. It was past nine; of course Dick was already up. Lew could smell coffee, could hear the distant voice of the AM radio anchor reading the day’s commodities prices. He dropped his head and rolled it back and forth, stretching the muscles of his neck, amazed to discover that he didn’t have a headache. 

He felt like he’d been asleep for a week and he was ravenously hungry. Shuffling to the bathroom, he thought he’d just throw some water on his face and brush his teeth, but when he saw his reflection in the mirror, he was so shocked by the state of his hair, the ragged beard, his wild, red-streaked eyes, that he immediately resolved to shower and shave, try to make himself look decent for the man who’d been cleaning up his vomit and helping him to the bathroom for god knew how many days now. Dick had suffered enough.

And of course, he’d have to do something about that massive hard-on. 

After his shower, he dressed and made his way stiffly down to the kitchen, where he found Dick at the table, entering figures into the accounting ledger. He looked up when he heard Lew’s footsteps on the stairs and his face broke into a relieved smile. 

“You’re up.”

“I figured it was about time,” Lew said as he took his chair at the table. 

“How are you feeling?” Dick set down his pencil and looked closely at him, like an engineer examining a bridge for signs of weakness. 

“Okay,” Lew said with a little shrug. “Out of the woods anyway. Thanks to you.” 

Dick looked into his eyes and gave him a small nod in recognition, and Lew knew that that was all he would say about the harrowing ordeal he’d just put him through. They shared a quiet moment to remember it and then let it go. 

“Did I miss anything?” Lew asked. 

“Just your birthday.” 

Lew turned to look at the calendar tacked to the wall next to the telephone. He squinted to read the month. 

“Son of a bitch,” he said in surprise. He turned back to look at Dick. “What’d you get me?”

Dick huffed. “Besides sober?” His brow was furrowed in umbrage, but Lew could tell he didn’t mean it. 

“What about harvest?”

“Any day now.” 

Lew couldn’t read the subtle smile that came into Dick’s face then. It was affectionate, and perhaps grateful, but it was a little sad too. Nostalgic, even. A chill ran through Lew’s body and he felt a sudden, overpowering need to be closer to him, to get a hold on him and not let go. He pushed his chair back from the table. 

“We’d better go check it then, don’t you think?” 

Dick nodded and followed Lew out of the house, calling for Teddy as they walked across the yard and to the fields. The weak October sun was warm on his face. Lew dropped his head back and breathed the cool, clean air deep into his lungs. As they approached the edge of the field, Lew reached for Dick’s hand. They stood facing each other for a moment. The morning sun brought out the blue flecks in Dick’s eyes, shining like pale silver. He squeezed Lew’s hand. 

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” 

In a moment of striking clarity, Lew saw that everything he loved most in the world was right here in front of him. Dick, these fertile acres, the stalks of corn they’d planted themselves, waving tall above their heads. Their dog. Their life. It was all right here. There was nothing else, nothing that mattered anyway. He didn’t need whiskey, or the escape it offered him. He knew that now, was so certain of it that he wished for a bottle, just to show Dick how strong he was in his conviction. He’d unscrew the cap and pour it all out right here, onto this ground they’d nurtured and cultivated into such a nice little life for themselves, a life he’d nearly ruined. 

But he’d gotten lucky, and that more than anything else was how he felt right now. Lucky to be spared the fate of so many others. Lucky to be alive and sharing that life with such a patient, loyal man. Lucky to be bright and fresh and new on a morning as beautiful as this. Lucky to be thirty-six and free. Lucky, so lucky, and he’d never take any of it for granted again. 

His sobriety would last exactly nineteen days.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick finds out that Lew is drinking again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for bad (though vaguely-described) sex and something approaching infidelity in this chapter.

Dick stood alone at the bathroom sink, brushing his teeth. The house had gone quiet now and the only sounds he could hear were the occasional whine of mattress springs from the guest bedroom and the wet scrape of bristles across his teeth. The stillness was a stark contrast to the relentless roar of the combine engine, the rumble of the tractors as Lew and Harry took turns dragging the grain carts back to the bins. They were a beautiful sight, those grain bins, full to bursting with this year’s crop. The money in those bins; the peace of mind. The satisfaction of another honest harvest, another year of their lives measured out in bushels to the acre. That was something to celebrate. 

Only Dick didn’t feel much like celebrating. And he didn’t understand why. Wasn’t he surrounded in blessings, practically drowning in them? Hadn’t the weather been perfect, a fitting end to a glorious growing year? The whole county would be flush after a year like this, the spring debts paid, no more worries about keeping the heat on through the winter. He should be happy. 

“So how’s morale?” Harry had asked him earlier, and Dick hadn’t had the first clue how to answer. 

He concentrated on moving the little plastic cribbage pegs back to the starting line, worried for a moment that expressing anything other than the deepest gratitude for his husband’s newborn sobriety might tempt the God of Noah to send the flood that would wash it all away. 

“To tell you the truth Harry,” he’d said finally, “it's hard to say.”

The cards in Harry’s hands made a pleasant snapping sound as he shuffled them. It was just the two of them, Lew having said goodnight early again. After all those nights he’d gone to bed alone, Dick couldn’t adjust to the sudden change. Harvest had come just a few days after Lew had made it through withdrawal, and maybe he was simply exhausted from it, needed to catch up on his sleep. But that didn’t account for the forced smiles and distant look in his eyes, the way he seemed to keep slipping away, into a world where he couldn’t hear their voices anymore or understand their jokes.

That was just how it felt, like Lew was always slipping away, lost somewhere out on a vast and stormy sea. No matter how many times Dick threw him the rope, it would never be long enough to reach him, and he’d just have to stand there on the deck and watch helplessly as Lew drifted further and further away from him. 

“I think maybe it’s normal,” Harry said. 

“What is?”

“Him.” Harry set the deck down on the table and leaned back in his chair. “This funk he’s in.”

“Really?” Dick raised one doubtful eyebrow.

“Sure. He’s been drinking for what, twenty years?” 

“Something like that.” Dick cut the deck and passed it back to Harry. 

“That’s a long time.” Harry began dealing the cards. “He misses it. He needs to mourn.”

Dick picked up his cards and appeared to study them closely, but his mind was stuck on the word _mourn_. He’d figured it would take a while for the physical effects of half a lifetime of heavy drinking to work themselves out of Lew’s system, but he hadn’t considered the shock to his spirit, that Lew could be suffering the loss of a relationship as real and complex as any other in his life. He imagined the two of them in funeral suits, sitting side by side in silent prayer for both the departed and the bereaved.

They played the hand without saying much more, except to tally points. Then they played another. It was a nice distraction from all the unexamined feelings roiling inside of him. Dick didn’t understand it; Lew was sober. He’d gotten what he’d always wanted, what he’d prayed for. But instead of joy or hope or pride, he was filled with a sort of chilling uncertainty, reluctant to place his faith in anything he couldn’t hold in his hands. It was like he just couldn’t trust his own feelings anymore. 

He rinsed his mouth and watched the film of toothpaste in the sink dilute and then disappear down the drain. 

“Normal,” he sighed to himself, and lifted his gaze to look at his reflection in the mirror.

Though he saw nothing unfamiliar or out of place, he was struck by a sudden wild notion that he was looking at a stranger. How lonely, to stand there looking at his own face in the mirror. So often it had been the two of them. On busy weekday mornings, Lew shaving as Dick combed his wet hair, or vice versa. Or getting ready for bed, the way he’d sometimes bump his hip against Lew’s, or plant his feet wide and crowd him out of the way, hogging the sink until Lew threatened to spit his toothpaste in his hair. Falling into bed in a tangle of limbs and gentle laughter, and then the hush, the halting breaths, sliding his fingers between Lew’s as he gripped the back of his hand. 

And then Dick thought of all those nights when Lew, emboldened by whiskey, would walk up to him at the kitchen sink, or corner him by the stairs, or press him up against the bathroom door. How he’d take Dick by the hips and pull him back against his body, murmuring a breathy “feel that?” against Dick’s neck before turning him around and kissing him roughly, their teeth knocking together as his clumsy fingers tore at Dick’s fly. No matter how it began, it would always end the same, with Lew cursing in defeat while Dick did everything he could think of to bring his cock back to life. 

After the fourth or fifth time like that, Dick’s patience began to wear thin. He understood that it wasn’t Lew’s fault. But he also understood that it was, and it made him angry that on top of everything else it had taken, alcohol had robbed him of this too. One night while he was reading on the sofa, Lew started in on him again with his graceless, drunken overtures and Dick had pushed him away, moved across the cushion to put more space between them. 

“You think it’s going to work this time?” he’d asked, looking up briefly from his book to glance at the front of Lew’s pants. 

They hadn’t had sex since. Not together, anyway. Over the past year, Dick’s morning showers had become a haven for the pleasure and release they used to give to each other. As he stood there with his eyes closed to the hot spray beating against his chest, Dick would think about other men and the uncomplicated sex they might have together. Men in tight navy shorts and white t-shirts, their faces blurring to shadow against the deep green of the Georgia hills. Sometimes it’d be a specific image of a specific guy, a certain sergeant leaning back against the wall of a ditch, Dick’s head buried in the open flaps of his trousers. Sometimes just a flash of skin, taut forearms and thighs, the sleek curve of his spine, shoulder muscles twitching, rolling under his golden skin as Dick pounded into him. Guys he’d known or just seen, guys he’d wanted and never had. He had them there, in the shower, while Lew was still in bed.

And he never felt guilty about it. He hadn’t been the one who’d ruined their sex life. Alcohol had done this and Lew had been its willing accomplice. Its lookout, its alibi, its getaway car. That’s exactly how it felt, like he’d been the victim of a crime, and his shower fantasies were another little rebellion, another fist raised in defiance at the injustice of it all. 

He turned out the bathroom light and walked into the bedroom, where he quietly changed out of his clothes, laying his pants over the back of the chair to wear again tomorrow. He slid under the covers and lay on his side to face Lew, his cheek propped in his palm. He placed his other hand on Lew’s chest, rubbing it slowly back and forth across his sternum. In the past, this touch had soothed Lew at his most jittery, and it made Dick heartsick to realize that this was the limit of their intimacy now. 

That was what he missed, more than the sex. Or maybe that was what the sex really was, underneath it all. An invisible chain they’d braided between them, and every time they made love, they twisted it up even tighter, so tight that he’d thought nothing could break it. 

Lew blinked open his eyes. “Baby,” he mumbled thickly. 

Dick’s mouth rose in a subtle smile and then he dipped his head down to kiss him. Lew sighed drowsily as he opened his mouth against the pressure of Dick’s lips, the sweep of his tongue. Dick’s palm on Lew’s chest began to inch down his stomach and toward the waistband of his pajamas, but before it could get there, Lew broke away and shifted to lay on his side. He took Dick’s hand in his and pulled it close. Dick kissed him one more time, but he’d already fallen back to sleep. 

As he lay there waiting for the soft waves to pull him under too, Dick imagined the scene from above, how identical they must look lying together like that, their foreheads touching and fingers laced together in the space between their chests. A mirror image of each other, reflected back ad infinitum, impossible to separate sinner from saint.

* * *

Lew sat in the driver’s seat of the sedan, running his fingers back and forth along the bumpy ridge of the back of the steering wheel. His eyes followed the desultory parade of weekday shoppers as they breezed in and out of shop doors, a flurry of paper bags and tartan autumn jackets and dried leaves skittering along the sidewalk. He knew he should get home, that Dick would be waiting for him to help winterize the machine shed. But he couldn’t seem to summon the will to start the car and shift it into gear. He couldn’t stop staring at the sign. 

It was the neon tubing in the daylight, the way it made a double image against the bold painted letters of the metal sheeting behind it. He stared at it until the two layers blurred together and then blinked his gaze back into focus when a short man in an apron appeared from within and flipped the sign in the window. The steering wheel felt slick under his hands and he looked down in surprise at the white skin stretched thin across his knuckles. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it so tightly. He let go of the wheel and took a long, deep breath, but it did little to relieve the feeling he had nearly all the time now, of some heavy weight sitting on his chest, squeezing his heart. His poor, caged heart, banging desperately against the bars of his ribs, crying out for release, for the only thing that had ever offered any hope of escape, and it was right there in that little brick building with the sign in the window, _COME IN, WE’RE OPEN!_

When he’d woken up that morning a few weeks ago, it had felt like coming out of a coma. He could see everything he’d been missing for so long and goddamn, it was so beautiful, everything so clear and fresh and new. The piercing blue of the sky, the crackle of the dried husks when he crushed them in his hand, the give of the soft, rich soil beneath his boots. The hint of November on the breeze that ruffled his hair. The smell of onions frying in butter and Teddy’s chin on his knee as he fed her scraps from the table. And later, cool, clean sheets against his skin and Dick’s arms around him, love folding him in like a blanket. So goddamn beautiful. 

He should have known it wouldn’t last. Within a few days, Lew could feel the gloom starting to creep in, the way you can see a line of clouds spreading slowly across a bright summer sky. By the end of the week, the jitters were back, only instead of his hands, it was his skin that shook, like everything inside of him was screaming to get out. At the same time, it felt like a thick fog had crept in and settled into his bones, slowing down his thoughts and reactions, a numbing of the spirit that smoothed off the rough edges of both the highs and the lows, until eventually he felt nothing at all. 

He knew that Dick was eager to get on with things, to reset their lives to the time before everything had gotten so twisted up and intractable. But even as he smiled and nodded and went along with Dick’s grand visions, Lew felt like he was caught up in some surreal pageant of reality, where he didn’t really have control over his life, only the illusion of it. There was nothing to look forward to, no future that he could see, just the endless, awful now, with no hope of deliverance, save one. 

The cravings came back too. They were there when he woke up in the morning and stayed at his heels all throughout the long day. He felt them most intensely as the sun was setting and the patterns of life around him began moving toward evening. Dick would have to pull him away from whatever job he’d been doing, the laughter in his voice as he told him the dinner bell was ringing barely concealing the worry underneath. He’d taken to going to bed early just to get away from it, but what sleep he got was restless and fitful, knowing that the next day only promised more of the same. More clawing and scrabbling and putting on a brave face for Dick, and all the while feeling some dark impulse inside of him fighting back with all its might, just looking for a reason to drink. 

He knew that was all it would take. Just one little push and he’d be back in it again. The shop door opened and a woman came out carrying a brown paper bag in the crook of her right arm, holding it close to her chest like a baby. Probably wine to serve with dinner, or maybe gin and vermouth for five o’clock martinis. _"Don't forget the olives!"_ he wanted to roll down the window and call to her. He could just look, he reasoned. No harm in that. He pulled the key out of the ignition and opened the car door. 

____

Just one little push, all he needed. It didn’t matter how flimsy the excuse; it was all relative anyway. Last night would do just fine. He tried to block it out of his mind, but the flashes came back too fast for him to guard himself against them. The slow drip of the faucet. Dick’s face in the mirror, the worried brow and eyes shut tight as a trap. His pajamas in a pool on the tile around his left ankle, and Dick’s hand shrinking away. 

____

He walked up and down the aisles, pretending he was just browsing and hadn’t made up his mind yet, every once in a while picking up a bottle and reading its label. He’d made it a point not to shop at this store unless it was an emergency; the last thing he’d wanted was to become a regular at the local, for his friends and neighbors to find out exactly how much he drank each day. 

____

It was nostalgic in a way, seeing all the brands, the flood of memories associated with each one. There was Harry’s favorite, over with the ryes. Lew made sure to buy him a bottle every year at Christmas, tucking it in amongst the fire trucks and board games and baby dolls he and Dick would buy for the kids. And Southern Comfort, Jesus. That story would always make him smile. Brilliant of Sink to send Dick on that errand, the perfect man for the job. There was the sweet bourbon his mother used to drink over ice in the summer. He could see her so clearly, carrying her tumbler around in her manicured hand, a cocktail napkin clinging to the wet glass. The shop carried a few different Bell’s Royal Vat reserves, but not his. He’d gotten lucky there. 

____

“Anything I can help you find?” the clerk called from behind the counter. 

____

Lew hesitated a moment, wondering if perhaps he kept some bottles stashed in a back room, something special for connoisseurs with only the most discerning tastes. 

____

“No thanks,” Lew said. “Just having a look around.” 

____

He didn’t need to drink. He could walk back out of that door with pride, knowing he’d wrestled the angel again, and won. But he was so tired from it, so worn down and soul-weary. He didn’t know how he managed to scrape together the strength to even get out of bed in the morning, and he knew that all it would take was one little push, that it was probably inevitable. In fact, it had already happened. 

____

They were standing side by side at the bathroom sink, like they used to. Dick was brushing his teeth, looking so handsome and healthy that Lew felt something begin to stir deep within him. For the first time since that first bright morning nearly three weeks ago, he felt a rush of heat flow to his groin, the thrumming urgency just below the surface, and he stepped closer to Dick, pressed against him and tucked his hand under the waistband of his shorts at the small of his back. Dick dried his mouth on the hand towel and then looked at Lew. 

____

“You sure?” he asked quietly. 

____

Lew nodded faintly, and then his hands were on either side of Dick’s face, trying frantically to pull him closer as they kissed, long and deep and breathless, Dick’s hands on his hips and then around his waist and then sliding up and down his chest. No matter where Dick touched him, Lew had the strange feeling that it was someone else’s body, so he pressed harder against him, backing Dick up against the sink. Dick’s cock was stiff against his stomach and Lew pressed his hand to it, squeezed harder than he’d meant to. Dick let out a little gasp. 

____

“Sorry.” 

____

“It’s fine,” Dick breathed against his mouth. “Let’s go in the bedroom.” 

____

“No. Here.” 

____

Lew couldn’t explain it, didn’t really understand the urge that drove him to reach behind Dick’s head and open the medicine cabinet, hand him the jar of petroleum jelly and turn them around, squeezing his body between Dick and the sink. He just needed to be fucked against something hard, needed to know that he wasn’t numb to everything. By the time he’d stepped one leg out of his pajamas, his erection was already gone. 

____

But he didn’t care. He leaned his weight into his forearms on the sink and arched his back as Dick pushed himself inside. They were both still for a moment while his body adjusted to the pressure and then he was pressing back against Dick, harsh commands falling from his lips, growing louder and angrier in his desperate attempt to feel anything. 

____

“Come on,” he demanded impatiently. “Harder.” And then again, and louder, when he could tell Dick was holding back. 

____

“Harder, Christ,” he spat. “Why can’t you just fuck me hard for once.”

____

Dick stopped moving. Their eyes met in the mirror. 

____

“Is that what you want?” Dick asked. 

____

Lew nodded. “Please.” The commanding tone was gone from his voice. 

____

Dick closed his eyes tight and began thrusting again. Lew felt Dick’s hands gripping his hips, and then sliding down between his thighs, and before he could stop him, Dick touched his cock and then quickly drew his hand away. He kept his eyes closed and his hands on Lew’s hips as he finished, which was only a matter of seconds. 

____

They were both quiet as they cleaned up, whispering the most perfunctory “goodnight” as they crawled into bed. Lew lay there wondering what the hell had just happened, how something that had started so sweetly could turn to poison in their faltering hands. If they’d ever find their way back together again or just wander around bumping into one another occasionally, never again connected in the way they used to be. 

____

He took a bottle of Scotch from the shelf and felt its weight in his hand. Just one. For last night. For not knowing a good thing when they’d had it. For Dick’s hand shrinking in horror from his limp cock. If that didn’t call for a drink, nothing did. But Dick would know. He’d smell it on his breath the moment he walked in the door. No, he couldn’t, not after what they’d been through. He put the bottle back on the shelf. 

____

He began walking back toward the door, past the rum and the liqueurs and the gin. He found himself staring at a shelf of vodka. Here was an idea. Tasteless, odorless. He didn’t really even like vodka, so there was no fear of getting hooked again. Without thinking, he took a pint bottle from the top shelf and slid it into the pocket of his coat. 

____

“Still alright over there?” 

____

He looked up at the clerk, his hand still in his pocket. The man was reading a book, hadn’t seen what Lew had almost done. But Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? That he could just walk out the door and no one would notice he’d just stolen a fifth of vodka? 

____

“Yeah,” Lew said in an overly eager voice. “Yeah, I’m just about ready.” 

____

After paying for the bottle, Lew began walking to the car, imagining going home and tucking it away somewhere and not drinking any of it. Perhaps just knowing it was there would be enough. But that thought only lasted the length of time it took him to reach the end of the building. He turned and walked down the alley to the back of the store.

____

____

* * *

____

____

Raquel Yasgur had been working the Saturday afternoon shift at the Sullivan County library for nearly a decade, and in that time the only people she’d ever seen consulting the medical reference books were high school students working on projects for their health classes and Marilyn Enderton, music director for the Lutheran church and notorious health nut, who was always foisting her radical ideas about the curative properties of wild plants on anyone who’d listen.

____

Which made the bachelor farmer hunched over a stack of books at the end of one of the study tables an object of some curiosity. He frequently stopped by the library during her shift, him or his friend, but usually they just slid a few returns across her desk and made a quick circle around the contemporary fiction stacks. They were friendly enough, but a bit odd too, and intensely private. Their tastes in reading were certainly more literary than any farmer she’d ever known, though when they found time to read with the yields they were getting on those four hundred acres of former dairy paddock, she couldn’t figure. 

____

And here he was again, the fourth weekend in a row. He never checked out anything, just went straight for the card catalogue and flicked through the A-Al drawer for a little while until he found whatever it was he was looking for. Then he’d sit at the table for an hour or so, scribbling copious notes onto the kind of steno pad they sold three for a dollar at the drugstore. Every time she walked by to see if he needed anything, he’d rest his forearm against the stack of books so she couldn’t read their spines, and every time as he was getting ready to leave, he’d hug them close to his chest until he’d put them all safely back on the shelves. 

____

Raquel peered at him over the rims of her glasses as she stamped check-out cards and emptied the return bin, wondering what in the world he was up to.

____

____

* * *

____

____

Dick was indeed up to something, but he’d be damned if the volunteer librarian gossip network was going to catch wind of it. He’d begun these weekend research sessions after their first attempt at making love again had ended in such abysmal failure, but the more he read about alcoholism, the more he realized that it was something he should have started long ago. 

____

That had been over a month ago now, nearly three weeks into Lew’s sobriety and well past the time when Dick had thought things would have been back to normal. That was when he’d begun to realize that he understood nothing about what whiskey had done to Lew, nothing at all, and if either of them had any hope of making it in this sober new world, he’d need an education he couldn’t get from listening to sermons or tracking the flow of cash in and out of their bank account. 

____

His Saturdays at the library often felt like wandering around in a labyrinth, pursuing elusive leads only to wind up at the same dead end where he’d started. But sometimes he got a break, and a reference in one journal would point him to a book, which would point him to a study, and then he’d really learn something useful. It was while following one of these trails that Dick came across something that very nearly scared the breath right out of his lungs. 

____

“Alcohol addiction,” the book read, was a form of “chronic suicide”, with the alcoholic “impelled to ruin himself by self-poisoning”. 

____

That was where this road led and perhaps Dick had known it all along. For years he’d been content to let Lew walk it alone, hoping that maybe he’d figure it out on his own, get tired of it and just change directions. On some level, he supposed he’d always resented the idea that he was responsible for Lew, even as he’d taken on every obligation and responsibility little by little, until Lew had become virtually helpless, himself indispensable. He hated it, but he didn’t know how to change it now. 

____

So he came to the library, where he read up on brain chemistry and the Oxford Group and Bill W. and Freud, anything that might help him understand and know, finally, what they should do. He lost any remaining illusions about the feckless charm of the gentleman drinker or Lew’s upper class rejection of willpower and restraint. He saw clearly now that Lew did not have control over it, and probably hadn’t for a long time; on that, the experts seemed to agree. But the reasons were varied and depended entirely on whom you asked. The doctors said Lew had a disease and the psychoanalysts said it was a deep-seated neurosis stemming from some childhood maladaptation and the social workers said he was the product of an upbringing steeped in a culture of drinking. 

____

All of them said he could be treated, but never cured. 

____

Dick had suspected as much. After watching Lew try to quit so many times over the years, it was clear that this thing was just too powerful now, that it had its hooks in him too deep. But even though all the books said that it was not a matter of if he’d drink again but when, and even though he’d been there and seen it for himself, Dick still clung to the hope that maybe Lew would defy them all. Or at least he had, up until he found the bottles in the garage. 

____

He was standing on the step ladder pulling storm windows down from the loft when he saw them. At first he hadn’t even thought they were booze at all. They were narrow and clear, nothing like the dark green port bottles with the bulbous neck and the stout little shoulders. His next thought was that they must be very old, perhaps even left there by the people who’d owned the house before them. But they’d been through everything when they’d moved in; Dick had made sure of that, giving every building on the property a thorough cleaning from the cellar to the rafters. He wouldn’t have missed a stash of four identical vodka bottles hidden discreetly in the little nook between the workbench and the air compressor. 

____

Two were empty. One was half-full, the other unopened. He stared at them for a moment, trying to think of another explanation. Perhaps Lew had just forgotten about these when they’d done their sweep of the house. He felt his heart sink as the knowledge stole in like a mist across the field. They were Lew’s. They could be no one else’s. Whether he’d drunk from them years ago or just that morning, they were more evidence of how deep the secrets between them lay, and hot, angry tears suddenly filled Dick’s eyes. He breathed hard in and out of his nose, hanging onto his self-control for as long as he could. Dropping his head in his hands, he allowed himself one full minute to cry, for the betrayal and self-pity and utter exhaustion to wrack his body before reigning it all back in and drying his eyes on his sleeve. 

____

He gathered the bottles in his arms. As he walked out of the garage, one slipped from his grasp and shattered on the concrete floor. The sound shook something loose in Dick, and one by one he dropped the others too, throwing them at the floor as hard as he could and reveling in the sound they made as they broke to pieces and the alcohol swished out across the concrete. By the time he’d swept all the broken glass into the dustpan and dumped them into the trash bin, he felt a little better about things. Maybe Lew was drinking again. Maybe he wasn’t. But Dick emerged from the garage that day a little less naive about the power of his own resolve. The next morning, he went to the library. 

____

“Anything I can put back on the shelf for you, Dick?” 

____

The librarian’s voice cutting through the silence of the library startled him and his arm moved instinctively to cover the page he was reading. 

____

“No,” he said abruptly, and then softened. “Thanks. I’ll get them.” 

____

He smiled at her. She smiled back, but didn’t leave. She glanced down at the open books spread across the table, at the notebook page filled with uneven lines of his messy scrawl. 

____

“You’re sure?” 

____

“Yeah. I’ll be finished up soon.” 

____

Her eyes swept one more time over the table and then she knocked her knuckles twice against it and turned to leave. 

____

Dick looked at the list of names he’d written down in his steno pad.

____

“Actually,” he began quietly, and then raised his voice. “Raquel?” 

____

She turned around and smiled eagerly at him. “Yes, dear?”

____

“Is there something like a university directory?” he asked. “Some place I could find numbers for departments or faculty members?” 

____

“I think I know what you mean,” she said, putting her glasses on. Their beaded chains hung in sparkling loops around her ears. “Let me just go check the reference catalog.” 

____

As she left, Dick began drafting a letter. 

____

_Dear Dr. Jellinek_ , he wrote. 

____

_My name is Richard Winters and I have recently read your report on your 1946 study of what you call “problem drinkers” and the disease concept of alcoholism. I believe that someone I love dearly may fall into this category and I’m writing to you in the hope that..._

____

When he got home that afternoon, he found Lew bundled up on the front porch steps, throwing a stick across the yard for Teddy to chase after. 

____

“Those old-timers at the Co-op are worse than a sewing circle,” Lew said as Dick took a seat beside him. “What’s the gossip this week? How Duane Hamrick’s putting ammonia on his fields now instead of manure?”

____

Dick hugged himself against the cold November wind and looked at Lew’s profile. His hair was blowing up in little jagged tufts and his cheeks were rosy. Dick wondered for a moment whether that was from the cold or if he’d been drinking. 

____

“I wasn’t at the Co-op.”

____

Lew turned to look at him, his brow scrunched in consternation. 

____

“You weren’t?”

____

“No.” Dick cleared his throat. “I lied about that. I’m sorry.” 

____

Lew was about to speak again when Teddy ran up to them with a soggy stick in her mouth. Dick buried both hands in the soft, warm fur of her scruffy neck for a moment and then took the stick from her mouth and threw it across the yard. 

____

“Go get it, girl,” he said after her. In his periphery, he could see that Lew was still looking at him, still waiting for an explanation. 

____

“I’ve been spending a lot of time at the library.” 

____

Lew blinked a few times and breathed a quiet laugh. 

____

“Okay. I don’t see why you think you’d need to lie about that.” 

____

“I’ve been studying about alcohol,” Dick said. 

____

“Oh.” Lew arched his eyebrows and turned once more to look out at the lawn. “And what have you learned?” 

____

“A lot,” Dick began calmly. “How it affects your brain. What it does to your…” He hesitated. “To your body.” 

____

Lew nodded and exhaled a deep, ragged sigh. 

____

“Honey.” Dick reached into the pocket of Lew’s jacket and pulled his hand out, holding it in his. He covered the back of Lew’s hand with his other palm. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you were drinking again?”

____

Lew turned his head quickly, a combination of fear and anger flaring in his dark eyes. “You think I’m drinking again?” 

____

“Are you?”

____

Lew held his gaze for a long, heavy moment. 

____

“No.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled in what Dick could only call abject sincerity. “Do you believe me?”

____

Teddy trotted up to them again, dropping the stick at Lew’s feet and wedging her body between them. Dick let go of Lew’s hand to stroke the glossy crown of her head. 

____

“Yes,” he said finally, but that was a lie too. Dick wasn’t sure what he believed in anymore.

____

____

* * *

____

____

Lew sat in his leather club chair in the living room, a glass in his hand and a jazz record spinning on the hi-fi. The book in his lap was open to the third chapter, but he’d lost interest somewhere around the part when the officers were ridiculing the priest for being a queer and had been reading the same paragraph over and over again. He’d picked the novel off the shelf in an attempt to convince himself that he could write a better war book than Hemingway and what he’d read so far had only confirmed that assumption. 

____

Dick had left early that morning for Lancaster. Lew had forgotten the occasion. The ninetieth birthday of a beloved aunt or the baptism of a second cousin, once-removed, something along those lines, and Lew had argued forcefully against it, since they’d be back there in a few weeks for Christmas anyway. And the roads! They were supposed to get the first clipper of the season this weekend. What if they wound up stranded at Dick’s mother’s house, with the separate bedrooms and Ann’s husband pointedly referring to him as “Uncle Dick’s friend” even when the boys were nowhere within earshot? But when Dick told him he didn’t have to go along, Lew had given up his protest and let Dick do whatever he thought best, which was exactly what he was going to do all along. 

____

So it was just Lew and Teddy for the weekend, a proposition which had disappointed him only slightly and only at first. When he realized it meant he could eat whatever he wanted to and play his records loud late into the night, without Dick wincing and asking whatever happened to melody, he brightened considerably and even helped Dick pack. 

____

“You’ll be alright?” Dick had asked as they stood in the driveway together. He’d started the truck to warm up the engine and they were shrouded in a thick, white cloud of exhaust. 

____

“I’ll manage.” 

____

Dick smiled briefly and pulled him into a hug. Lew hadn’t worn a coat and could feel the warmth of Dick’s body through the thin layer of his sweater. Then Dick kissed him and climbed into the truck, throwing his arm over the seat to look behind him as he turned around and headed down the long gravel drive. 

____

Lew took another sip from his glass and let his head fall back against the plush leather. It only looked like he was idling away a winter Saturday slumped in his chair with a drink in his hand; actually, he was proving something to himself. If he could enjoy just two drinks, three at the most, not as the end goal of the evening but merely as a pleasant backdrop, then he could join the ranks of well-adjusted grown men and women who shared after-work cocktails and parties with friends, where no one blacked out or had to be carried home or put under a cold shower. 

____

But what he wouldn’t give for a bottle of whiskey. That would be the true test. It was easy to stop after two when you didn’t particularly enjoy it in the first place. And it had been so long since he’d had a proper drink. He was tired of sneaking nips from the bottles in the garage or the machine shed or back behind the corn crib. He missed the comfort of drinking in his leather chair by the fireplace, straight, no chaser, just like the song now pouring from the speakers. 

____

Goddamn, what strange and provocative sounds that man could coax from a piano! Why didn’t they have a piano? He’d had lessons as a child, could probably still read music. He remembered the teacher holding her hands over his, the rustle of her blouse as she turned the pages of the music for him. How she wrote his mother that note saying that Lewis had a gift and that she hoped they’d allow her to help him nurture it. And then he’d lost interest and stopped practicing, and his latent musical talent became, like everything else about him, just so much wasted potential. 

____

He took another drink and frowned when he realized the glass was empty. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself another, his second. He was keeping careful track tonight. The vodka swished around the bottle as he set it back down, enough, he noted, to get him good and pie-eyed. In the past, he’d have thought it pointless to leave a bottle even half-full, but not tonight. Even if there was only a swallow left, he was stopping at two. 

____

As he walked back to the living room, his eyes landed on the framed photograph of him and Dick standing shoulder to shoulder in their stiff new officers uniforms on the day they graduated from OCS. He stopped and looked at it for a moment, standing so close to the wall that he could make out the individual stripes on their ribbons. Dick had a few more sun spots and creases now, but was still as handsome as he’d ever been. He was struck by the image of his own face, though. The definition and sharp angles of it, so full and bright and young. It was hard to believe there had ever been a time when he’d been so hale and strong, before the long, burning nights and the miserable days had hallowed him out like a shell. 

____

He took one of his diaries off of the shelf and opened it. _1952 By the Day_ read the letters across the top of the page. Dick gave him one every year for Christmas because he kept asking for them, thinking that maybe this would be the year he’d keep a record of his thoughts and then turn them into something that somebody might actually want to read. He’d never made it past January. He drank and read, chuckling at the things he’d thought were important two years ago. _“Dick to Albany for a Grange meeting. Would rather perform circumcision on myself with a dirty trench knife.”_ Flipping to an open page, he found a pen in the narrow drawer of the end table and began writing. 

____

_“As Yet Untitled Novel About the Second World War, by Capt. Lewis Nixon III, 506th PIR”_

____

The tip of the pen hovered above the page. He took another drink as the words to the perfect opening line took shape in his head, and then drank again, emptying his glass. That was the thing he always forgot about with vodka, how quickly it went down. Back to the kitchen, then. If he was going to write a novel, he’d need fortification. On his way back into the living room, he stopped at the picture again. Their faces looked back at him with what now seemed like urgent expectation, two men whose paths might never have crossed. That’s what his book would be about. He took the frame off the wall and carried it tucked under his arm back to his chair. 

____

He opened the diary again, balancing the photo on his thigh as he began writing. 

____

_The junior officer candidates assembled that morning around the parade grounds were among the laziest and most entitled in the United States Army and indeed, of their entire generation, all except for one._

____

It was terrible, he knew, but he had to start somewhere. The next sentence came a bit easier, and soon he found a rhythm, the words and images springing from his mind faster than he could get them down. He drank and wrote, invigorated by a sudden energy he hadn’t felt in years. Once he’d filled the page with his loping Palmer-method script, he sat back in the chair and picked up his glass again, but again it was empty. He remembered the bottle in the kitchen and stood quickly to go and retrieve it, forgetting about the picture frame in his lap. It fell to the floor with a clatter that startled Teddy out of her nap. She hopped down from the couch and stood looking at him, just as confused as he was about how the photo had ended up on the floor. 

____

He picked it up by the frame and saw that the glass had broken, cracked right down the center. Panic set in as he carefully picked up the broken shards and set them on the coffee table. He realized in a flash of sudden self-awareness that Dick would be home tomorrow and ask what had happened, and that no matter what lie Lew fed him about accidentally bumping it with the broom, he’d assume Lew had gotten drunk and broken things again. He had to figure out a plan. 

____

The stores were all closed now so he couldn’t go out and buy another frame. But perhaps the neighbors… of course they would. Mitch and Arthur would give them the shirts off their backs and wouldn’t think it strange for him to stop by on a Saturday night in search of a frame to fit such a charming photo. They’d probably find it sweet. They’d all have a drink or two and catch up, it had been so long, they had so much catching up to do.

____

He put on his hat and coat, careful to close the flap around the photo, now unprotected without the glass. The storm that had begun that afternoon as a light flurry had picked up in earnest, the wind whipping the snow in chaotic patterns that burned his eyes and needled under his collar. The snow in the beams of his headlights obscured the path ahead of him and he had to slow the car to a crawl, continuously blinking to focus his blurry eyes on the road. 

____

As he drove, he tried to think of the last time they’d been invited to Mitch and Arthur’s. Not since summer, surely, and that was odd. For a while they were getting together weekly, if not for dinner then for drinks and cards or a bonfire at their place on the lake. And then it came to him. The lake. That day. Regret flushed cold through his whole body as he remembered the looks of warning Dick kept flashing at him, pulling him to the side by the wrist, “stop touching him or we’re leaving.” But it was only a little friendly flirting, and it wasn’t just him. Mitch had encouraged it, walking down the dock like a model in those tiny European trunks, laying his towel down inches from Lew’s. And Arthur, pouring him another drink the moment his ice cubes looked dry. 

____

Could anyone really be surprised then when he somehow found his hand stroking up and down Mitch’s tanned, firm stomach and leaning in to kiss him? Not Mitch, who’d just laughed and turned his head, half-heartedly pushing him away. Not Arthur, who’d yelled at him from the diving pontoon and then swam comically as fast as he could back to the dock. Certainly not Dick, who’d just gathered their things and helped him to the car. Lew could still hear the shame in his voice as he’d apologized to them, and he could still see the defeated look in his eyes when he’d asked Lew later, after he’d sobered up, if he’d ever cheated on him. 

____

“Just tell me,” he’d said, and he sounded so tired it broke Lew’s heart. 

____

“No,” Lew insisted. “Never. I would never do that to you.” 

____

He didn’t know how to make Dick believe him and doubted whether he even deserved it. He made another promise that night to cut back and not let himself get so drunk anymore, and Dick probably hadn’t believed that either, but the next morning they woke up and went to work again, starting over like they had so many times before, because they simply didn’t know what more they could do. 

____

Lew slowed the car as he approached the next intersection and turned it around. He couldn’t go to Mitch and Arthur’s. He had to go back home and face Dick’s anger and disappointment yet again, and make promises yet again, and break them yet again. There was no other way. As he neared the boundary of their property, he pressed his foot harder on the gas pedal, just wanting to get home to his dog and his records and his chair by the fireplace. The tires hit a patch of ice and he skidded back and forth wildly, turning the wheel uselessly first in one direction and then the other. He slammed his foot on the brake and the car slid off the road and into the ditch, landing in the snow with a soft ‘whump’. 

____

His feet were numb by the time he’d finally walked the half mile back to the house. All he wanted was to fall into bed and forget everything he’d done, every stupid mistake he couldn’t take back. Walking through the back door, he set the frame on the kitchen table and took off his coat. Compared to all his other transgressions, he supposed breaking a picture frame wasn’t really that bad. He’d take it to the shop to have the glass replaced on Monday, and then it would be back on the wall, good as new. He and Dick, twenty-three and in love. At least that was something. He looked down at the frame and his stomach dropped. It was empty, just a blank rectangle of cardboard. The photo was gone. 

____

“Oh god.” 

____

He must have lost it outside somewhere on his walk back to the house. 

____

“Oh _god_ ,” he said again, his voice tight with anguish. 

____

He looked out the window, at the snow blowing in wild, blinding gusts and the vast darkness of the empty fields. He’d never find it, even in daylight; the wind had probably blown it into the next county by now. It was gone. Then his gaze landed once again on the bottle, standing half-full and all by itself in the center of the table. 

____

He carried it back to the living room by the neck and dropped heavily into his chair. Teddy took little notice of him, standing up momentarily in her bed of old blankets next to the sofa to turn once and settle back down to sleep. The Hemingway lay face-down on the rug next to his diary. His novel. Lewis Nixon, author. He laughed bitterly and drank, and drank, eventually dropping in and out of a sleep plagued by that war dream again, the one where he can’t find Dick. 

____

Again, he runs as fast as he can from Battalion HQ all the way to the very front of the line, endless fields of blood-soaked scrub and heather, asking every man he meets. One of them points to a building far in the distance, on the edge of a bombed-out town, and he’s off again, running for what feels like hours, until he reaches the field hospital. It’s chaos and disorder inside, everyone yelling for doctors or morphine or God or their mothers, and again he has to check them all, look into every ruined face. He finds him at last, on a cot all by himself in a dark corner off to the side. 

____

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says, holding Dick’s bloody hand to his cheek. 

____

“You found me,” Dick says, and then he closes his eyes, and then he’s gone.

____

____

* * *

____

____

“Lew?” 

____

He woke to Dick’s voice, full of frightened alarm, and a series of bracing pats to his cheeks. 

____

“Lew?” 

____

He sucked in a deep breath of air and sat up suddenly. 

____

“Jesus, what?” 

____

Dick sighed in relief and then stood up and stepped away from the chair. He studied Lew with a look on his face that changed from worry to confusion and then to barely contained anger. Standing there with his hands on his hips and breathing heavily in and out of his nose, Lew thought he looked ready to throw something. 

____

“What happened?” Dick asked. 

____

Lew sat forward and began smoothing down his hair. He looked around the room. Weak sunshine filtered through the curtains, bathing the room in pale winter light.

____

“Must've fallen asleep," Lew said, blinking. He swallowed, but his mouth was sticky and dry.

____

Dick looked down at the rug, nodding his head slowly. Lew could see the muscles of his jaw tighten and relax. 

____

“Why’s the car in the ditch?” 

____

“What car?” 

____

Lew furrowed his brow in concentration and felt pain radiate through his head like an artillery barrage. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips hard to his forehead, rubbing in slow circles, trying to remember. A patchwork of images came back. The snow in the headlight beams, the wind cutting through the thin fabric of his pants as he stumbled back to the house. The car. The photo.

____

“Our _car_ , Lew,” Dick seethed. He opened his mouth like he was going to say more but then just shook his head and waved his hand like he was swatting away an insect. He looked around the room, still shaking his head slightly, until his gaze stopped at the empty space on the wall. But he didn’t say anything; perhaps he knew already, and maybe Lew had pushed him to a point where he no longer cared. He tried to stand up but he was so stiff that he only got halfway up before sitting back down again.

____

“Look, Dick, it’s fine. I fell asleep reading.” Lew gestured down at the mess of open books on the floor. “See?” 

____

Dick looked at the books and at the empty bottle tipped over on the rug behind them. 

____

“Yeah,” he said. “I see.” 

____

“Dick." Nausea hit him like a wave and his heart was beating so fast he thought it might burn itself out, the way a lightbulb flares just before it goes dark. Of all the times he'd fucked up, of all the mornings he'd woken up to realize that he'd let Dick down again, this one had a feeling of finality about it, and he wasn't ready for it. 

____

“I want to see you in the kitchen.” Dick’s voice had gone eerily calm. “There’s something you and I need to discuss.”

____

____

* * *

____

____

“‘An Asylum for Alcoholics of the Professional Class’,” Lew read from the front of the pamphlet. He looked up at Dick from across the table. “What the hell is this?” 

____

“It’s where you’re going,” Dick said. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest in a manner which he thought would convey the force of his conviction. But it was also an attempt to calm himself, to quell the trembling energy rippling through his whole body. He even felt it in his teeth. 

____

“You -” A choked off laugh caught in Lew’s throat and Dick heard his voice change from derisive to a sort of awed betrayal. “You’re sending me to a drunk farm?” 

____

“It’s not a drunk farm,” Dick said. “They’ve helped a lot of people. I think they can help you.” 

____

Lew opened the pamphlet but his eyes only grazed briefly over the pages. 

____

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “This place is in Minnesota.” He looked back up at Dick and slid the pamphlet across the table. “Have you been to Minnesota in the winter? Fucking Siberia.” 

____

Dick stood up, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. Rage like he hadn’t felt since the war surged hot through his veins and he pressed his fists hard against the tabletop just to give all that anger somewhere to go. As soon as he’d seen the car in the ditch, he’d known what must have happened, but he was so panicked then that he wasn’t even thinking about Lew's drinking. All that mattered then was finding him, making sure he was safe. But now that he was sitting here across from him, lying and deflecting again, all Dick wanted to do was scream. 

____

“You think this is funny?” he shouted. “You think you can just keep going like this, that you have any control over yourself at all?”

____

“I think I ought to at least have a say in it,” Lew shouted back. “Don't I get a choice?”

____

“Sure,” Dick said. He could hear the venom in his voice and he didn’t care. “Here’s your choice, Lew. You go to Minnesota or I’m divorcing you.” 

____

“You can’t divorce me, Dick,” Lew said bitterly. “We’re not really married.” 

____

Something cracked open inside him then, like the ice breaking on the lake in the spring. Drop by drop, relief began to seep in, warming him with a little flicker of light he thought had gone out. But it was still there, deep inside, a candle in the window to guide his way home. He took the ring off of his finger and set it on the table. 

____

“Alright,” Dick said quietly. “If that’s the way you feel.” 

____

“Dick.” 

____

He took his coat and hat from the hook by the door. 

____

“Dick.” Lew’s voice broke to a ragged whisper. “Don’t - where are you going?” 

____

“I’m going to get the car out of the ditch,” he said, pulling his gloves onto his hands. He paused in the open doorway and pointed at the pamphlet on the table, and the thick manila envelope next to it of all the literature he’d compiled. “Read it, at least," he said. "Give it a chance. You're running out of options, Lew.” 

____

He left Lew there at the table, still staring at the circle of brushed gold sitting cold and motionless on the formica.

____

____

* * *

____

____

Lew’s feet made deep marks in the snow as he trudged across the lawn to the barn. He walked past the truck in its usual spot in the driveway and behind it, the sedan with the tow chain still attached somewhere under the front bumper. In his hand, he clutched Dick’s wedding ring so tight that the edges dug into his palm. 

____

He found Dick sitting on his stool at the work bench blotting at something with a shop towel. He looked up when he heard Lew open the door. Lew walked toward him but stopped when he was still several feet away.

____

“Any trouble with the car?” he asked. 

____

Dick shook his head. “No. You didn’t get it in very deep.” 

____

Lew smiled and tipped his head to the side. “Not for lack of trying.” 

____

Dick huffed a tired laugh and went back to his work. 

____

“I read it,” Lew said. “All of it.”

____

“Yeah?” Dick set the towel down and swiveled the seat of the stool to face Lew. "What do you think?"

____

Lew exhaled a shaky breath. He didn't know how to explain it to Dick, how everything in those papers had hit him so hard and so close that he'd bounced back and forth between feeling relieved to see everything he'd been through echoed so truly in black and white, and feeling so terribly naked and exposed at the thought of someone knowing him so well.

____

"I think you're right. I can't control it anymore." He walked slowly toward Dick, until he was standing before him. He held out his closed fist. 

____

“What’s that?” 

____

Lew turned his hand over and opened his palm. 

____

“I’m gonna go,” he said. “So you can put this back on.” 

____

Dick just looked for a moment at his ring and then his eyes found Lew’s. 

____

“Really?” His voice shook, and when he looked up at Lew, the shifting pattern of relief and worry and hope drifting across his face produced the sweetest, saddest pang in Lew's heart.

____

Lew nodded. “You don’t deserve this.” 

____

Dick wrinkled his brow and pressed his lips together in a tight, worried line. “You don’t deserve it either.” 

____

Dick's eyes fell once again to Lew's hand. He took the ring and slipped it back onto his finger. Then he wrapped his arms around Lew’s waist and pulled him close, pressing his cheek to Lew’s chest. Lew draped his arms around Dick’s shoulders.

____

“I love you.” Dick’s voice was muffled by Lew’s coat. 

____

“Love you too," Lew murmured into Dick's hair. 

____

As they held each other, Lew felt the tension melt from his shoulders and down his back, felt all that fear and remorse leaving his body like the clouds of vapor on his breath.

____

“What were you working on?” Lew asked. 

____

Dick sat back and swiveled around to face the bench again. He slid his arm around Lew's waist as Lew turned to hook his arm around Dick's neck, both of them suddenly reluctant to let the other go. Dick picked up the towel. Underneath it was the photo of them that Lew had thought he'd lost for good.

____

“I found it in the snow when I went to get the car.” 

____

Lew could only stare. He supposed it wasn’t all that miraculous, the likelihood of the photo turning up near wherever he’d dropped it being fairly high, even with the wind. But he marveled all the same. At the image of the two of them standing side by side, a little faded now, a little damaged, but still them. At that tremendous accident of history that brought them together all those years ago. And at Dick, after everything, beside him still.

____


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lew goes to treatment and Dick begins his own recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may recognize the "asylum for alcoholics of the professional class" as the first iteration of Hazelden, which pioneered the multidisciplinary approach to addiction treatment that became known as the Minnesota Model. Again, I'm not an addiction specialist; this is based on my personal experiences of co-addiction and many rabbit holes of research. If I've gotten any of the AA stuff wrong, I hope you'll forgive me :)

Lew rang in 1955 lying sedated in a single bed on what felt to him like the edge of the universe. Detoxing was easier this time, thanks in large part to the little paper cups of pills his nurse would tip into his palm every time the shaking got too violent. Her name, he found out later, was Lois, and she'd spent the last few nights sitting in a chair next to his bed, much like Dick had done the first time around. Except that she was getting paid for her trouble. Her knitting needles made a clicking sound that Lew found sort of soothing, and he was content to just lie there and listen, staring at the wrought iron rungs at the foot of the bed frame until his eyes went blurry. 

The clicking reminded him of the sound of glass bottles knocking against each other as the flight attendant pushed the beverage cart down the aisle of the plane, and his eyelids grew heavy as he felt himself slipping back into that half-conscious state between dreams and memory, where Dick was offering him a magazine from the stack he’d picked up at the airport newsstand. Lew was about to take the _Life_ when he heard the clinking and he turned his head automatically to take inventory of the bottles, recognizing each one by the shape of its neck. He turned back to find Dick looking at him. 

“Do you need something?” Dick nodded toward the cart, and Lew had to force himself not to laugh. 

The fact that Dick had to ask only proved that he still didn’t really understand. How could he? How could anyone? For a moment Lew felt like he was looking at himself from above. He was the only person on the entire plane, belted to his little vinyl-covered seat, floating all by himself thirty-thousand feet above the Earth. 

He patted his left breast pocket. “I’m fine,” he said to Dick, and smiled at the irony. 

When they’d found out that a bed wouldn’t open up for him for a few weeks yet, they'd agreed that Lew shouldn’t attempt drying out until he was in the capable hands of professionals. He made it through that time by drinking just enough to avoid withdrawal, which was still plenty, just not so much that he couldn’t walk a mostly straight line or piss standing up.

The flight attendant set two cups of coffee on their tray tables and Lew tipped a splash from his flask into his, gazing out the tiny window as he felt the steam caress his upper lip. Below, he could see the narrow ribbon of the Mississippi River, black against the white of the snow, as the plane began its descent into Minneapolis. 

Later, after they’d checked into their hotel downtown, he and Dick had gone for a walk along that river. They'd taken the foot bridge over St. Anthony Falls and as they stood there watching the churning and crashing that powered the flour mills that had put this city on the map, Lew had a terrifying thought of flinging himself off the bridge. It wasn’t a premonition or a death wish, just a sudden, wild fear. He didn’t want to do it, but what if some powerful urge overcame him and he couldn’t control it? The more he thought about it, the more nervous he became that this irrational daydream might somehow come to pass. He hurried Dick to the other side of the bridge, where they had a quiet dinner at a little inn on Nicollet Island. The next morning, they got in their rental car and made the two-hour drive to the farmhouse on the prairie.

He laid his palm to his chest. He could still feel it there if he really concentrated on it, its hard edges and snub little cap. How it curved around the slope of his ribs like a sheet of armor. He’d gone back to whiskey and had nearly forgotten what it was like to drink it from a flask, how the metal flattened out the taste and all but killed the aroma, but the nostalgia of it, those long, cold nights in the ground with his body hunched beside Dick’s as he slept. Nothing to keep him warm but a layer of Army wool and the occasional sip from his flask and Dick slouching against him. 

Dick had it now. Lew had handed it over to him as they’d stood in the broad circle drive outside the house, both reluctant to leave the safety of the car and begin the long walk to the front door. 

“Looks like a nice place,” Dick said. 

Lew swept his gaze over the house. It was in the Victorian style of theirs at home, but about twice as large, with gables jutting out on all sides. A few chairs that had seen better days were arranged haphazardly around a squat table on the wide front porch and he could see shadows moving across the curtains. A thin plume of smoke curled from the chimney and disappeared against the bleak gray of the midwinter sky. He reached into his coat pocket and took out his flask. 

“Here.” He held it out to Dick. 

“What do you want me to do with it?” 

“I don’t care,” Lew said. “Chuck it in the river. Leave it on the plane. Just get rid of it.”

But he knew that Dick would do no such thing. When he got home, he’d take a box down from the shelf in their closet and there it would stay, kept safe among old treasures. A broken cricket. A silk map. A watch stopped at 1030 on a sunny day in September, 1945. All their tarnished, precious things. Lew tugged at the wedding band on his finger. It slipped off easily in the cold. 

“You’d better hang on to this too.” 

Dick looked down at the ring in his palm for a moment. Lew watched as his long, slender fingers slipped it into the watch pocket of his trousers, and then a wave of soothing clicks washed through him like the beating of the wings of a thousand tiny starlings. He blinked his eyes open and had that disorienting feeling again as the foreign objects around him came into focus. He tried to sit up. 

“Awake again?” The nurse set her knitting bag on the floor and stood over him closely studying his face. He felt her cold fingers on the inside of his wrist. “I can give you something for that.”

“Don’t know what it is,” Lew said. “I’m dead tired but I can’t seem to sleep for more than an hour at a time.”

“That’s pretty common.” She squeezed the back of his hand. “Your body’s had quite a shock.”

She walked over to the cabinet by the door and came back holding a paper cup and a glass of water. Lew raised the cup in a little toast before emptying it onto his tongue and washing the pills down with a sip of water. He lay back down and turned his head to look at the moon out the window, radiant against the flat black of the sky. 

“What day is it?” he asked after a moment. 

“It’s Friday,” she said. “It’s New Year’s Eve.” 

“New Year’s Eve,” he murmured. He could feel the sedative kicking in. “That explains the fireworks.”

She shot him a wary look that softened to a smile when she saw the tired smirk on his face. 

“Hey there. I almost forgot.” She reached into the pocket of her smock. “You got a letter today.”

“A letter?”

“Yeah.” She held the envelope up to the weak light on the nightstand to read the return address. “From D. Winters. You want me to read it to you?” 

He felt wide awake at the sound of Dick’s name, animated by a sudden urgency. 

“No.” He tried again to sit up and reach toward her, and nearly fell out of the bed. He held out his hand. “Please.” 

She gave him the letter but he didn’t open it. Dick must have sent it before he’d even left for home. He knew it was probably just a pep talk, _hang tough, who the hell are we?_ and all that, but he didn’t trust himself in his current state not to crumple into a soft, broken mess at the sight of Dick’s gawky handwriting and the voice he knew he would hear in his head. He dropped his head heavily back onto the pillow. 

“It’s too quiet in here.”

“I can turn the radio on for us.” 

He heard the electric hum of the switch and then static as she turned the dial, and then a full orchestra, trumpets swinging a wandering moonlight melody and a sad, distant voice singing a song full of loneliness and longing. 

_Skylark, have you seen a valley green with spring?_

He fell asleep to the sound of her knitting needles clicking once again, Dick’s letter still clutched in his trembling hand.

* * *

Dick spent New Year’s 1955 slumped on a sofa in Wilkes-Barre with two sleeping children at his side. The last minute change of plans probably hadn’t come as much of a shock to Harry and Kitty, who’d looked at him with sympathetic smiles on their faces even as they’d tried to convince him that he really would have fun at the neighborhood party. But he’d begged off and Harry cancelled the sitter and instead of holding up the wall amidst a crowd of juiced and jolly strangers all night, Dick wound up playing Chutes and Ladders and Simon Says until he’d nearly forgotten what it had felt like to leave the love of his life in the middle of nowhere to fight the toughest battle he’d ever faced, all on his own. 

But the kids reminded him. Bridget, the oldest, standing on a chair by the stove to turn the crank on the popcorn popper, looking up at him to ask, “how come Uncle Lewis isn’t here?” Reading bedtime stories with three-year-old Cal, seeing Lew’s elegant cursive on the nameplate, _To Calvin, From Uncle Dick and Uncle Lewis, Christmas 1953_. And Adam, who, just before he’d fallen asleep watching an edited-for-television version of _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ , kept pointing at the TV and insisting vehemently that Captain Nemo was, in fact, Uncle Lewis with a beard. 

“Sure looks like him, doesn’t he?” Dick had said, nodding his approbation and blinking back unexpected tears. 

At first it had felt like a vacation, extra time landed in his lap like a chance gift, and it almost made him giddy thinking what he could do with it. Anything, really. He could do anything, now that his life wasn’t ruled by the relentless machine of addiction. The first day back he’d rearranged all the books, alphabetizing and organizing them by genre and filling a box with duplicate copies to donate to the church. The next day he went to town and bought all new linens for the bed. But by the third day, all that time had begun to feel so empty and quiet without Lew that when Harry called to invite him down for New Year’s, he’d accepted gratefully and was loading Teddy and his overnight bag into the car within an hour. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be alone. That had never bothered him. It was being without Lew. Without the sound of his boots knocking against the doorframe as he kicked the snow off, or the way he’d bury his cold face in the crook of Dick’s neck when he came in from outside, Dick shrugging away from him but secretly liking it, the shock of Lew’s cold, scratchy cheek against his soft, warm skin. Without the weight of his body next to him on the mattress, or that throaty noise somewhere between breathing and snoring he made when he was sleeping, the peace that would wash over Dick when he heard that sound. He even missed the smell of his cigarettes, the whiff of sulfur from the match, the smoke, sweet and sharp, tinging the morning air. 

He still had Lew’s ring in the watch pocket of his trousers. When he’d gotten home he’d placed it on the felt-lined tray on the dresser where Lew kept his watches and tie clips, and each night before he went to bed he’d hold it in his hand for a while, slip it just over the first knuckle of his index finger and rub the nicked gold band against his lips. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it alone in the cold house so he’d brought it along, casually slipping it into his pocket as though it were merely an afterthought as he’d quickly packed his overnight bag. It was important, even if he and Lew were the only ones who recognized it. 

He’d forgotten that fact when they’d gone inside to get Lew checked in, so preoccupied had he been with finding the house and making sure Lew had all of his things. It hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment that his presence there, the very fact of him, might jeopardize the whole thing. 

“Maybe I should stay in the car,” he’d said when they were halfway up the front walk. 

Lew had looked at him with sudden panic contorting his face, shook his head and clutched the sleeve of Dick’s coat. 

“No,” he said. “Come with me.” 

Checking in was surprisingly easy; they’d been expecting him. The cheerful nurse at the front desk led them to a little office off of the entryway, where they were greeted by no less than the program director himself. 

Though the several framed diplomas on his office walls testified to his professional credentials, he introduced himself merely as Daniel and shook both their hands, gesturing to a pair of chairs opposite his desk. As he explained how the program worked, Dick noticed his eyes periodically shifting between Lew and him, like a party guest silently pressing for an introduction. Lew just went on answering his questions as though he hadn’t noticed it. Finally, after he’d given Lew the books he was meant to study as part of his treatment, the doctor looked at Dick and asked point blank who he was. 

“And you must be Lewis’…” The narrowed eyes and skeptical brow, the head tipped slightly forward. “Brother?”

Dick opened his mouth but didn’t speak. Why hadn’t they thought of this?

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “It’s just that, well, normally it’s a family member dropping off, the wife or the parents or…” He trailed off and the silence hung heavy between them. 

“No,” Dick said. “I’m not his brother.” 

“He’s my attorney,” Lew broke in with his usual nonchalance. “I thought there might be some paperwork or legal things.” 

The doctor breathed a quiet chuckle. “I don’t think that will be necessary. You’re of sound mind, aren’t you?” 

“Well.” Lew cocked his head to the side. 

“I imagine you can sign the forms yourself. Joyce out front will take care of that when we’re done here.” He looked down at a stack of pamphlets bound with packing twine. “Only I’m not sure what to do with these. Normally it’s family, as I said, and - I suppose we could mail them.” 

Lew held out his hand to take the parcel, glancing only briefly at the one on top before handing it to Dick. He smiled. 

“For my family.” 

Dick smiled back. “I’ll make sure they get them.” 

There was nothing more to do after that except say goodbye, which, thanks to Lew’s lie, they had to do as counselor and client while the good doctor and the intake nurse looked on. 

“I’ll be in touch,” Dick said, gripping Lew’s hand in a slow and protracted handshake. 

Lew nodded and smiled faintly. “Give my regards to Miss Theodosia. Tell her I’ll be back on my feet in no time.” 

Dick grinned back at him. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that.”

And then the nurse was taking the suitcase from Lew’s hand, gently guiding him around the front desk and through a doorway, beyond which lay the medical wing, where Lew would be examined thoroughly before changing into a hospital gown and being led to one of the well-lit, white-doored rooms marked DETOX in chipped yellow paint. And then it would begin. 

Dick dropped the bundle of pamphlets in the back seat of the rental car and forgot about them until two hours later, when he was returning the car at the airport and the teenager working the booth chased him down in the parking lot. 

“Sir?” he said, breathless. “You left something.” 

Dick looked at the pamphlets. The one on top was titled “One Wife’s Story” and for a moment, he considered feigning ignorance. But then he remembered the frightened look in Lew’s eyes as he’d looked over his shoulder at Dick, just before he’d disappeared behind that door. 

“Thank you.” Dick stuffed the bundle into the side pocket of his top coat and didn’t pull them out again until he was home, alone in the weak twilight of the kitchen. 

He still hadn’t read them. He couldn’t really understand why, when he approached every other challenge in his life with the same sanguine self-confidence, he was afraid of reading a few pamphlets. He now saw that everything he’d been doing since he’d gotten home from Minneapolis - the cleaning, the organizing, the spontaneous visit to Wilkes-Barre - had all been with the purpose of putting off the inevitable. 

So much of his energy over the past months had been funneled into learning as much as he could about how to help Lew that he’d been able to pretend for a little while that he didn’t see the gaping hole it had dug out inside of himself. That it wasn’t even there, that he was the same person he’d always been. But in Lew’s absence, the truth had begun to seep in, drip by drip, and Dick knew that the time when he could ignore it and make everything about Lew was running out. Sooner or later he’d need to take an unflinching look at himself, no matter how terrified he was that he’d find nothing but shadow, the vague outline of a man he used to be. 

The station signed off and the TV screen was lit up in snowy static. He blinked his eyes into focus and sat up, catching the popcorn bowl just as it was about to slide off of his lap. 

“Come on guys,” he said, clapping his hands twice. “Bedtime.” 

Bridget groaned and rubbed her eyes. Adam, on his other side, just curled his body into a little ball and burrowed further into the cushion. 

“Is it midnight?” Bridget asked sleepily

Dick eyes strained to read his watch. “It was. Twenty minutes ago.” He looked down at Adam’s face, scrunched against the armrest . “Come on, buddy.” He shook Adam’s shoulder, but the boy gave no indication that he had any plans to walk up the stairs to his bedroom by himself. Dick stood and picked him up, felt his wavy hair on his neck as Adam’s head lolled against his shoulder. 

“Bridget, get the TV,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the stairs. 

“I have to say goodnight to Teddy,” she said, taking tentative steps toward the sleeping furry heap on the floor next to the radiator. 

“Well say good night and then get the TV.”

“You’re supposed to kiss someone at midnight,” she said as she trailed a few steps behind him. “Do you think Daddy kissed Mommy at midnight?” 

Dick imagined Harry with his arms around Kitty’s waist, the two of them smiling their dizzy, love-drunk smiles at each other. The depth of affection in their soft voices as they wished each other a Happy New Year and kissed, an image repeated in the happy couples all around them, all across the country, all over the world. 

“I’m sure he did.”

* * *

Lew lined the hem of the sheet to the edge of the mattress and swiped his palm down the bed in a clean, crisp motion that left not even the trace of a wrinkle. At the foot of the bed, he raised the corner of the sheet and pulled the end tight, smiling to himself at the perfect diagonal line the tucked sheet made against the side of the mattress. He used to resent them, all of the innumerable, exacting standards the Army had used to bend them to its uniform will and erase any individual distinction between them. But now he approached the task with the same single-mindedness he’d once applied to translating Sink’s orders into operations designed to ensure the most gain with the least casualties. It gave him a feeling of competence, however trivial, and there wasn’t much in his life anymore about which he could say that. 

The other rules all seemed fair enough and Lew trusted they’d been adopted for very sound reasons, but none had quite the same beautiful simplicity as this one. If they wanted to stay, he and the other patients merely had to practice responsible behavior, attend lectures on the Twelve Steps, talk to each other, and not let each other sit around and mope. And make their beds. Which Lew did every morning with the precision of a senior officer of the goddamned Airborne Infantry, because he wanted to stay. More than that, he knew that he needed to stay, that if he had any hope of earning back Dick’s trust, of having a life with him - hell, of seeing his fortieth birthday - he’d need all the help he could get. 

Coming out of detox two weeks ago, he’d felt the same exuberance he had on that first morning at home, passing through the same stages of humble gratitude into confidence, and then into delusion. He’d had every intention of calling Dick and telling him to come pick him up, he was fine now, until that first group meeting, when he’d discovered that his persistent obsession with the notion that he could someday drink like a gentleman again was a form of insanity, really, and in this way, he was far from unique. He wasn’t special; he was an alcoholic.

On the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a circle of drunks swapping fish tales about their worst sprees, and Lew had joined in eagerly, drawn in by the camaraderie, the bonding over a shared passion which the rest of the world could never understand. But scratch at it a little and the veneer of conviviality revealed something much sadder underneath. What Lew saw during that meeting, and what he read over and over in the Big Book later that night, was that none of them, no matter how badly he wanted to or how many promises he made that this time would be different, could ever stop drinking of their own free will. Sooner or later, he’d hear the song of that first drink calling to him and find all his defenses subdued by this one driving need. Lew understood that now. But he couldn’t escape the fear that there was something different about him, some fundamental defect that made him incapable of reform. 

He didn’t voice these concerns; at least, not at first. He protected his twin secrets like a hidden cache of booze, legitimately worried that their revelation might damn him as one of the hopeless. He’d taken the first step and admitted that he was powerless, that his life had become unmanageable. He was ready to beg for forgiveness, to fall to his knees in submission and ask God to take it all away. The only hitch was that Lew didn’t believe in Him. 

Looking back on his life, he couldn’t pinpoint a moment when he’d realized this about himself. He’d never examined the wreckage of his most poignant pain and sorrow and concluded that there was no God. Maybe there was. But unlike Dick and the other patients and the little Lutheran pastor who came to bless them on Sundays, faith was not something that came naturally to Lew, and he wondered whether he even had the capacity to believe at all, or if, like so many of his other latent talents, he'd drowned it in whiskey years ago. How could he believe when he didn’t know what God was?

But he tried all the same. He wished Dick could see how hard he was trying. He sat with his hands folded and head bowed during morning prayer and meditation, even though he hadn’t the faintest clue where to begin. He read the book and took notes during lectures, not even running them through his own filter of cynicism and cleverness first. And the coffee, Christ, he thought he might drown in it, drinking cup after cup as he listened to the other men tell him their stories, their everlasting fuck-ups, their heart-rending losses and their endless parades of wasted second chances. 

He revealed as much about his own history as he dared, and there was plenty to share without mentioning Dick. But as the spotlight of all that rigorous honesty crept slowly closer to exposing the truth, Lew began to feel like an imposter. That was why making his bed in the morning brought such relief and satisfaction; it was the only thing he could do with true fidelity. The rest gave him a vague sense of not belonging, a nagging fear that they’d discover his secret weaknesses and kick him to the curb. 

“How’s it going with the other guys?” Dick had asked during their first Sunday phone call, and Lew had understood his meaning right away. He knew Dick well enough to hear the real question in his voice clear as a bell. _Do they know about you? Have you had any trouble?_ This concern was nothing new to them, the daily feints and evasions a matter of habit now. But Lew could sense the worry in Dick’s voice, knew that he shared the same fear that after working so hard and coming so far, it could so easily be taken away. It had been a long time since the stakes had been so high. 

“Just fine,” he’d answered, and it wasn’t a lie. He liked the other patients, for the most part. They got on well, mainly because they all seemed to recognize something of themselves in each other. They were proof that someone else knew what it was like, had felt the same fire of shame and sickening chill of regret, and together they made a fellowship that eclipsed the usual divides of class or creed or vocation. They weren’t alone anymore. 

But that didn’t mean Lew was always honest with them. When his roommate, a kindly man in his fifties named Charlie, whose only daughter hadn’t spoken to him since he’d blacked out at her wedding last spring, had asked Lew if he had kids, Lew had first said that he wasn’t married, but then backtracked and said that he had been, but he wasn’t anymore. 

“I mean, there is someone,” he’d finally settled on. “But we’re separated right now.” 

Another time, he was out with a few of the younger guys on a cross country ski tour of the property when Bradley, the resident counselor, asked about Lew’s farm in New York, and Lew had been so preoccupied with not toppling over onto the snow that he hadn’t thought before responding.

“We’ve got a little over six hundred acres,” he’d said proudly. “Just corn and hay right now, but we’re looking into buying an orchard.” 

Bradley had smiled and nodded, and then a puzzled look came into his face. 

“Who’s ‘we’?” 

And again, Lew had dissembled and equivocated, feeding him some flimsy line about a family inheritance and a shared investment. It didn’t feel right to deny Dick like this, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. At the same time, it made him angry. It felt like they’d set him up to fail, which wasn’t fair. Not after the effort he’d put in to really give the program a fair shot, after the money they’d taken from next year’s seed fund to pay for all of it. It festered inside of him like an ulcer, which he knew probably wasn’t good for his recovery either, and it was this anger, even more than the fear of being exposed for a fraud, that drove him to finally knock on the door of the program director and all but dare him to kick him out. 

Doctor Anderson - “Daniel, please,” he insisted to Lew, who still hadn’t gotten used to everyone calling each other by their first names - welcomed him with his usual gracious smile and friendly demeanor, gesturing to a chair opposite his desk. 

“What can I do for you, Lewis?” 

“To tell you the truth, doc,” Lew began casually. “I’m a little concerned about Step Four.” 

“‘We made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves’,” he quoted the book, nodding slowly. “That’s a hard one for a lot of people. I think it’s only natural to worry about facing the most unpleasant parts of ourselves.” 

“Yeah,” Lew said. His eyes darted briefly to the window. It was just beginning to grow dark outside and the sky was streaked orange and pink behind the black outlines of the trees. He looked back at Daniel. “It’s not that, exactly.”

The doctor blinked and shook his head, but remained quiet, inviting Lew to elaborate. 

“Look, I’m not afraid to see the worst in myself,” Lew said. “You can trust me on that. But it’s going to reveal something about me that... I - welI. You see, the thing is,” he stammered. 

“Yes, Lewis?”

“We’re supposed to be honest, right?” He was animated all of a sudden, sitting back in his chair, and flapping his wrist with authority. “I mean, we’re supposed to tell each other every sordid thing we’ve ever done, just lay it all out there for everyone to pick over.”

“No one’s going to judge you, Lewis.” Daniel said softly. “But yes. Until we can admit to and surrender our flaws and defects to a Higher Power, we’re still at the mercy of our self-will run -”

“Riot, yeah.” Lew interrupted. “I get the thing about self-will run riot. I’m not talking about that.” 

“Well what, then?”

Lew took a long, deep breath and looked down at his bare left hand. The faint white line where his ring should be was scarcely visible against his pale skin. But he could see it, and that was all that mattered. 

“Do you remember that man who was here with me when I checked in?” 

“I think so,” Daniel said. “Your lawyer right? But I don’t understand, what’s he got to do with -”

“He’s not my lawyer.” 

A look of mystification floated briefly over Daniel’s face. Lew looked calmly back at him and didn’t speak. Daniel opened his mouth but then closed it without saying anything. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, folding his hands in his lap. 

“Do you understand now?” Lew asked. 

“Yes, I think I do,” Daniel said quietly. “We see it quite frequently in problem drinkers.” 

“What’s that?” 

Daniel cleared his throat. “Homosexual tendencies.” 

“Tendencies,” Lew blinked a few times and chuckled softly to himself. “Okay.” 

“It’s true.” Daniel sat forward and leaned his elbows on his desk. “In fact, psychoanalysts have long argued that homosexuality and alchoholism stem from the same neurosis, maladapted sex role development in -” He stopped when he saw the incredulous grin lighting up Lew’s face. 

“Shit, doc,” he said. “You’re telling me that if I stop being a drunk I’ll stop being a queer too?”

A faint worry line appeared on Daniel’s brow and for a moment he seemed reluctant to answer. “You’ll always be an alcoholic, Lewis. It’s a chronic disease, but it doesn’t have to be a terminal one. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It is.” Lew nodded and looked down at his lap. “It’s alright, then? For me to be here?” He looked back up at Daniel, his lips wavering in a sardonic little smile. “I mean, despite my tendencies?”

“Our only requirement is that you’re an alcoholic and you want to stop,” Daniel said. “The rest is your business. Whether you share it with the group is up to you.” 

The conversation after that shifted back to the Steps, and Lew got the sense that the doctor was relieved to talk about something else. He thought he’d feel relief himself, and he did, but not primarily. Mostly he felt like he’d been given permission to carry on as he always had, welcome to the party as long as he observed its customs. He supposed it was good that they wouldn’t kick him out for it or dismiss him as a lost cause. But as he got up to leave, he also felt the caution in the doctor’s words. _Whether you share it with the group is up to you_ , but don’t be surprised when the pitchforks come out. It wasn’t particularly comforting. 

“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?” Daniel asked as he opened his office door. 

Lew shook his head and was about to decline, but over the past twenty minutes, something had changed in him. Whether it was the fearless and searching moral inventory or just his defiant streak, he didn’t know. He paused in the doorway.

“Actually, there is something I’ve been wondering about.”

“Yes?”

Lew made a few halting movements of his head, trying to find the best way to put it. “Can the program still work if you don’t believe in God?” he asked. “I mean, strictly speaking, how necessary is that?”

Daniel took a step back and opened the door wide again. 

“Lewis, I think you’d better sit back down.”

* * *

Lew had been gone for nearly three weeks when Dick stopped shaving. He’d woken one January morning to find the farm buried under eighteen inches of snow and had hastily pulled on long johns and thick wool socks before scrambling out to the barn to hook the plow blade up to the truck. It took him a few hours but he got the driveway cleared and four miles of gravel road besides. He knew the county crew would be through eventually, but it certainly wouldn’t be in time for the school bus or the milk trucks that rumbled by every morning at nine to pick up the previous day’s yield from the neighbor’s dairy farm. 

By the time he finally got around to showering later that evening, he didn’t see the point of shaving. He still didn’t see it the next morning. As he stood at the bathroom mirror examining the faint smudge of auburn coloring his cheeks, he began to entertain the notion that all those things that used to seem so important to him were the priorities of another man, another life. And besides, he’d never had a beard before. He’d always wanted to know what it was like. 

It was a small thing, but it mattered. Doing something for himself, just because he wanted to, was something that mattered a great deal now that he’d begun to see just how much of his life had come to revolve around Lew. The excuses he’d made and accepted; the lies he’d told and believed. The messes he’d cleaned up and the petty punishments he’d levied when it seemed like the only option available to him. As Lew’s addiction had worsened, Dick had gradually come to believe that he was responsible for him, that everything hinged on the actions he took, when the truth was that Dick didn’t act at all. He reacted. For years he’d fought as hard as he could to change something that was entirely beyond the scope of his command, and for years it had made him feel so guilty and so ashamed when he inevitably failed. 

Some of these insights he arrived at all on his own and some he’d learned from the pamphlets. One of them called alcoholism a “family disease”, and Dick had really resisted it at first. That was when he was still swinging back and forth between cataloguing every insult and embarrassment and indignity Lew had subjected him to and missing him so badly he thought his heart might shrivel up and die. He didn’t want to hear about the role he’d played, how his instinct to protect Lew from facing the consequences of his drinking had actually made it worse. That it wasn’t protection at all, but collusion. All those mornings he’d woken up determined to forget the night before, in the name of letting go and starting over. All the empty bottles he’d taken out to the trash, pretending not to count them. Dick had a drinking problem too, though he’d never swallowed a drop, and just like Lew, he couldn’t solve it on his own. 

It had started that morning he’d come home to find Lew passed out in his chair, the car in the ditch, the books strewn across the floor. That photo in the snow. When he’d taken off his ring, he’d done so with the cold clarity of a person whose heart has stopped beating for a moment, revealing a brief glimpse of an afterlife too real to be believed. There would be life after Lew. He’d survive divorce, if it came to that, and he was resolved to stay on the right side of the hard line he’d drawn. When he slid the ring back onto his finger, it wasn’t out of obligation or fear of what might happen to Lew without him. It was a choice. For the first time since Lew’s drinking had gotten so bad, Dick saw clearly the stark divide between those things over which he had control and those that he didn't, and he chose to stay. 

He hadn’t known it at the time, but in finally laying it out in terms Lew couldn’t possibly misinterpret, he was already working the steps. Admitting he was powerless over alcohol had come as a relief; he could finally lay down that burden of responsibility, even if it took constant reminding. He repeated it to himself several times a day, _I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, I can’t cure it._ He’d read that in another pamphlet, though he couldn’t remember which one. They had titles like “So You Love an Alcoholic” and “Alcoholism, a Merry-Go-Round Named Denial”, but no matter what they were called, the message was basically the same: they were both sick, he and Lew, but there was hope. They could overcome the devastation alcohol had inflicted on their lives. They could learn to forgive themselves and each other, and to love more profoundly than they ever had before. But they’d have to work for it. 

It was comforting to know that, twelve hundred miles away, Lew was working through the same process. Admitting defeat and surrendering his stubborn self-will. Taking a long, unflinching look at himself and holding himself to account for his wrongs. Asking for help. He wrote lighthearted letters to Dick that always belied the gravity of what they were doing, referring to his treatment as his “little sabbatical” or his “prairie holiday” in one paragraph and then in the next, asking whether Dick thought God would still listen to the prayers of someone who didn’t really believe in him. 

Dick had known that the spiritual stuff would be the hardest part for Lew as soon as he’d read the Twelve Steps. It wasn’t easy for him either. He realized that all of his prayers had been half-measures at best, because though he’d been willing to turn his own life and will over to God, he’d still held tightly to the illusion of control over Lew’s. Take that away and what would he do with himself? Who would he be? His fearless and searching moral inventory had revealed not so much defects of character but a haunting emptiness, a collapsed tent, nothing to protect him from the icy wind blowing through his soul. The hardest part for Dick was facing what he’d become. 

That was why the beard mattered. “Shave for the girls at night,” Sink had always told them, “but in the morning, you shave for each other”. But what had Dick ever done just for himself? What did it matter now whether he still kept to his own side of the bed or parked the truck out in the cold so Lew could have the spot in the garage? He couldn’t come up with a single valid reason, other than the force of habits established long ago. 

But habits were learned; he was beginning to understand that now. It felt like such a formidable task sometimes, unlearning his automatic responses and listening instead to the feeble voice from deep within asking “but what do YOU want?” _Nothing_ had always been his standard reply. _I don’t need anything_. But that wasn’t the question; it wasn’t even the truth. _Nothing_. When his mother had called earlier that week to ask what he had planned for his birthday, that’s what he’d begun to tell her, that he planned to treat it like any other day. Wake up before dawn and do the chores, take Teddy out for her run. Read the news and get the mail and pay the bills and find odd jobs to distract himself when he started missing Lew. Any other day. But instead of all that, he’d told her he might go ice fishing. 

Ice fishing. He had no idea where the thought had come from. But later that day, he found himself dragging the ice shanty out of the machine shed and loading it up onto the trailer with a lightness of spirit that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He lost hours organizing his tackle, his mind never drifting from dusting off his favorite lures and reels to worry about Lew or remind himself that he owed him a letter. By nightfall, he’d packed it all into the bed of the truck so he could start out bright and early the next morning, his thirty-seventh birthday. 

He found an open patch of lake not far from Mitch and Arthur’s place and had his hole cut and the fire going in the little wood-burning stove by the time the other anglers had begun shuffling through the snow to their shanties. As he sat on his rickety little folding stool, staring into the dark hole in the ice, he let his thoughts drift across his mind like clouds. Sometimes he thought of Lew - how he hated ice-fishing, how the one time he’d joined Dick, he’d just gotten drunk and fallen asleep leaning against the stove. Dick had had to shake him awake when his coat began to smoke. He didn’t chase those thoughts away, but he didn’t hang onto them either. 

He caught four decent-sized brown trout. When he got home, he cleaned them and packed them away in the freezer, all but one, which he dipped in milk and crushed saltines and pan-fried with a few of the last potatoes from the garden. It was a good birthday. 

Before he went to bed that night, he took Lew’s volume of Whitman down from the shelf. He’d had a fragment of verse stuck in his head all day, something about being thirty-seven, inviting his soul to observe a spear of grass. He flipped the pages until he found it. 

_I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,  
Hoping to cease not till death_

Dick went back and read the poem from the beginning. Then he closed his eyes and said a prayer for the both of them.

* * *

Lew sat on a weathered cedar bench on the shore of a frozen lake, one arm stretched across the back of the empty seat beside him. Though the temperature hovered somewhere in the low twenties, he was only wearing one glove. In his other hand he held a cigarette, puffing on it contemplatively as he looked out at the lake. 

“Is this seat taken?” 

He turned to see Bradley, the resident counselor, standing behind the bench in a red buffalo plaid coat and a leather hunting cap, the shearling flaps covering his ears. 

“No,” Lew said, straightening a bit. He moved his arm to his side. “It’s all yours.”

Bradley sat down and looked at the lake. He let out a long, peaceful sigh. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” 

Lew looked closer but had no idea what the man could be referring to. The white expanse of the lake fading into the vast, dismal sky was broken only by a tiny line of black trees on the other shore and a scattering of ice shanties, the weak plumes of smoke curling from their chimneys the only hint of sentient life. 

“Sure,” Lew said, his voice flat and emotionless. “Beautiful.” 

They were quiet for a few moments, just sitting there gazing in silence on this apparently magisterial panorama that Lew just couldn’t see. 

“You were pretty quiet at the meeting today,” Bradley said finally. 

Lew sucked on his cigarette again, burning a quarter-inch of the white paper to ash. He didn’t respond. 

“And not just today,” Bradley continued. “You’ve been quiet a lot lately. The other guys have begun to talk.” 

Lew nodded, his head bobbing slowly up and down as his eyes blurred and Bradley’s voice grew fainter and fainter. He supposed he’d been expecting it, this lecture about not committing fully, not taking it seriously enough. And he understood their concern. Lately, while the others smoked together out on the deck or played canasta in the common room, he’d been spending more time by himself, reading and writing long letters to Dick or Harry, sometimes just sitting by the window lost in thought. In the meetings too, once they’d moved on from shocking each other with the unconscionable things they’d done when drunk, Lew had become withdrawn, reluctant to pry open the locked doors of his soul and allow the light of their scrutiny to come flooding in. 

“ - troubling you?” 

Lew blinked his eyes into focus and turned to look at Bradley. 

“Sorry?”

“I asked if there’s anything troubling you, anything you’d like to talk about.” He was leaning slightly toward Lew with his legs crossed and hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold. “Come on, Lewis,” he said. “You know it’s one of the rules here.” 

“Rigorous honesty,” Lew muttered, and brought the cigarette to his lips again, but it had gone out. He dropped the butt in the snow. 

“It’s his birthday today.”

“Whose?” 

Lew pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and offered it to Bradley, who waved him off. He shook one out for himself and tucked it between his lips. 

“Don’t you know?” he mumbled around the filter. “Didn’t Anderson tell you?” 

Bradley sat back and looked out at the lake once more. “I gather we’re talking about your lawyer friend.”

Lew flicked his thumb over the striker of his lighter a few times, but the flame wouldn’t catch. Cursing, he shook it vigorously and flicked again. He cupped his hand around the tip of the cigarette and sucked deeply, then turned his head to the side to direct the smoke away from Bradley. 

“His name is Dick,” he responded finally. 

Bradley was quiet for a few moments and Lew thought he sensed him recoil, like his body had shrunk by a few inches. But the bench was small; there was nowhere for him to go. He made a few small movements, like he was trying to get more comfortable, finally settling on hanging his right elbow over the back of the bench and turning slightly to face Lew. 

“Is that why you’ve stopped sharing in group?” 

Lew dragged on his cigarette again, exhaling the smoke on a long, deep sigh. “You remember a couple weeks ago, when we were talking about Chapter Five?”

“Sure.”

“After you left, a few of us stuck around and talked a little more. There’s that line at the beginning about how the program works for almost everyone, unless you have a ‘grave emotional or mental disorder’. I wanted to know what the other guys thought he meant by that.” 

One corner of Bradley’s mouth rose in a sympathetic smile. He seemed to know where this was going. 

Lew shook his head and huffed a bitter little laugh through his nose. “I shouldn’t have asked.” 

“You don’t really believe that though, do you?” 

“No.” Lew lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like…” He looked at Bradley. “Well it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?” 

Bradley tipped his head to the side, conceding the point. “Maybe. But you have to take that psychology stuff with a grain of salt. No one really knows what causes alcoholism, Lewis. Some people can drink and drink and never become dependent or they can stop after just one or two. But people like us can’t. With us, it’s like an allergy.”

Lew had heard the analogy before. He supposed it was as good an explanation as any other, but it didn’t do much to alleviate the fear that had lately taken root in him like an invasive weed, that for all its accolades and endorsements, the program couldn’t help him. That it wasn’t designed to. He’d be the one they’d point to as the exception to the rule, “It works for everyone except him, and he was doomed from the start.”

“I just feel like maybe I’m backsliding,” Lew said. “They’re all making their lists and admitting the wrongs of their past, and I - it’s just - ” He felt a huffy, inarticulate anger begin to flare up inside of him and he took another long, slow puff on his cigarette to try to calm down. “I can’t really do that, can I?”

Bradley blinked. “Why can’t you?”

“Because it all goes back to him,” Lew said with a sardonic laugh. “Don’t you get that? Every terrible thing I’ve done, everything I can’t take back.” He shook his head and his voice became quieter. “He’s there, in all of it. And if this doesn’t work, I’m going to lose him.” 

He sat up straight and took one last drag on his cigarette before dropping it in the snow and crushing it under the toe of his shoe. “So that’s why I’ve stopped sharing in group, Bradley.” 

The thick cold air absorbed his last words and silence expanded between them. Finally, Bradley crossed his legs and hooked his hands around his knee. He took a deep breath. 

“Alright if I give you my two cents?” 

Lew just shrugged listlessly. “Sure.” 

“I don’t think Step Five is your problem.” 

“No?”

Bradley shook his head. “No. I think the reason you’re having such a hard time with the moral inventory and admitting your faults is because you’re stuck at Step Three.”

Lew bit the insides of his cheeks and looked down at the snow. “‘We turned our lives and our will over to the care of God as we understood Him’,” he murmured.

“Do you think you’ve done that?” Bradley asked gently. 

“No.” Lew’s voice was hollow and flat. 

“And what do you think is holding you back?”

“Brad, if I knew that…” Lew trailed off. A breeze had suddenly picked up, swaying the bare branches of the cottonwood tree and shaking snow off the pine boughs. He folded his arms across his chest and hugged himself against it. 

“But you’ve read Chapter Four, haven’t you?” 

Of course he had, many times over. Titled “We Agnostics”, Chapter Four was all about calming the fears of heathens like him who bristled at all the God talk in the program. It emphasized spirituality over religion and choosing your own Higher Power over the narrow confines of dogma, and Lew appreciated that. Daniel had encouraged him to define God however he wanted, as whatever he could believe in. Dick had told him that God was love. Both seemed well-intentioned but unable to understand his dilemma. He wasn’t trying to understand God logically; he didn’t need to be convinced. He wanted to feel God moving inside of him and through him, wanted the sort of spiritual awakening that all the anonymous alcoholics in the book seemed to have had just after they took their last drink. Until he did, he worried he’d be stuck in a sort of aspirational purgatory, watching everyone else’s numbers get called before his. 

“Yeah,” Lew said. “And I want to believe, I do. I just don’t know if I have it in me.”

“Then maybe you should back up a little.”

Lew looked at him, his brow furrowed in skepticism. “Even more than I already have?” 

“You don’t have to believe in God for the program to work,” Bradley said. “You just have to believe that you’re not God.” 

_Not God._ Lew was suddenly transported back to Georgia, back when he’d first picked out that blur of auburn against a sea of khaki, a rare gem shining through the monochrome of Army life. The way Dick had looked at him, the way he’d touched him, disassembling him and putting him back together as something new, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. 

Lew breathed a quiet laugh. “You sound like my husband.” 

“No kidding?” Bradley asked with amused skepticism. 

“Yeah,” Lew said. “One of the first things he ever said to me. Our first CO at Fort Benning really got off on lording his rank over all us cocky recruits. One day he made us stand at attention for two solid hours, and once we’d finally gotten the order to fall out, Dick walks up behind me and says, real deadpan, ‘this guy really thinks he’s God, but I got news for him. He’s not.’” 

Bradley smiled. “Is that where you met him? In the Army?” 

“Yeah,” Lew said. He was still looking off in the distance, where he could almost see the red clay, the mountains thick with trees. “We were in the war together.” 

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s…” Lew felt the blood rush warm to his cheeks and he looked down at his lap, bashful all of a sudden. “I’d never met anyone quite like him,” he said after a moment. The dopey grin on his face faded to an expression that was more serious. “He just… I don’t know. He understood me.” 

Bradley nodded and kept quiet, inviting Lew to continue. He wasn’t expecting it to be such a comfort, finally talking about Dick after having kept him buried so deep for the past month, but it was, and as the stories unspooled between them, it occurred to Lew that maybe that was all God was. The one chance in a million that had flung them together all those years ago. The look of blind terror in Dick’s eyes as he’d held Lew in his arms and asked “are you alright?” Maybe God was that invisible chain between them, tugging at his heart every time he’d chosen the bottle over Dick. The reason they’d always found their way back to each other, even when it seemed like there was nothing left worth keeping. Especially then. Maybe God had been within him all along. 

That night, Lew dreamed of rivers. Bridges collapsing into the Rhine and falling back, digging in as Eindhoven burned. Leaning onto the hard iron railing of one of the Chicago River’s drawbridges, telling Dick about that marvelous feat of civil engineering that had reversed the flow of the river, sending all of Chicago’s waste and pollution downstream for the good people of St. Louis to enjoy. Looking out the hotel window at the steam rising off of the Mississippi that morning in Minneapolis, the last time they’d woken up together. 

And then he was standing naked on the bank of a river whose name he didn’t know. The cold water lapped at his toes and then, compelled by a force he could neither comprehend or ignore, he was wading in, the water curling in eddies around his calves. He walked farther, until the water was up to his chest. He turned his head. Behind him and ahead of him there was nothing but river, rolling on endlessly beyond the horizon. Ripples appeared on the surface and then Dick’s head and shoulders emerged from the dark water. It trickled down his face, catching in his eyelashes. He smiled at Lew, and his eyes shone like gold. 

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Dick said. 

Lew smiled back at him. “You found me.” 

Dick moved away from him, reaching out his hand as he stepped into the current. 

“Come on, love,” he said. “I’m right here with you.” 

Lew stood still, just watching him for a moment as Dick drifted further away. Then he walked out to where he could no longer touch bottom and lay back, feeling the water rushing all around his body. He closed his eyes and let the current take him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lew comes home from treatment. They adjust.

Dick woke gradually, his mind taking a long time to catch up with his surroundings. He’d been dreaming about the spring planting, the long sharp teeth of the cultivator tilling up rows of rich, black soil, so vivid that the dank and faintly sweet smell of the loam still lingered in his memory as he looked out at the flat expanse of patchy snow passing in a blur outside the window. He sat up straighter on the bench seat and the upholstery felt cold against this back. 

“Where are we?” He ran a hand through his hair to smooth it back into place. 

“Gary.”

“Indiana? I slept through Ohio?” 

“You didn’t miss much.” Harry’s last words were swallowed by a deep yawn that seemed to consume his whole body. He leaned forward, arching his back and rolling his head between his shoulders. 

Dick turned to look into the backseat. Teddy was curled up in her bed, her body tucked into a snug little heap against the door. He looked back at Harry.

“Ready for me to take over?” 

“Sure.” Harry arched his brows and blinked his bleary eyes in rapid succession. “We’re almost to Chicago.” 

Dick looked out the window again. Beyond the wide, empty fields, he could just make out a strip of black, thick and dark under a faint line of pink at the edge of the horizon. Above Lake Michigan hung a thin sliver of moon, like a parenthesis laid on its side. He picked up the green Stanley thermos from where it lay nestled against the seat between them, the vacuum seal making a satisfying little ‘pop’ as he unscrewed the stopper. He poured the last of the coffee into the plastic cup and closed his eyes as the steam kissed his nose. 

“Any sandwiches left?”

“No,” Harry said. “We’ll have to stop somewhere.” 

They’d left Wilkes-Barre just after eight with a full thermos and a lunch box of meatloaf sandwiches left over from supper. Dick looked at his watch. That had been nearly ten hours ago. He still wasn’t completely sure how he’d managed to convince Harry to ride along with him, to drive through the night and miss a holiday with his family, just to keep him company and take the wheel if he got too sleepy. He supposed it was the spontaneity of it, the chance to step out of his routine and do something completely different. Harry had always been game like that, he and Kitty both, and it was one of the things Dick loved most about them. 

They were also the only ones who knew where Lew had really been for the past ten weeks. Perhaps that was why they’d both been so receptive to the idea, even though Dick had sprung it on them at the last minute, asking tentatively as they peeled potatoes at the sink if Harry might consider coming along. 

“I know it’s Easter and all, but…” Dick had said quietly. “I think he’d really like to see you.” 

Harry had exchanged a brief glance with Kitty, who looked up from the mess of ground meat and eggs and breadcrumbs she was mashing together in a big yellow mixing bowl to give him a little nod. 

“What the hell,” Harry said with a casual shrug. “You seen one resurrection, you seen ‘em all.” 

And maybe it was more than just company Dick needed. Maybe it was more than just loneliness that had crept into those long, dark days like an insidious vapor, expanding and changing its shape to fill the walls of its container. Everywhere he turned he was confronted with reminders of Lew. Some were subtle, a faint hint of his aftershave on the thick steam of the shower. An unmatched sock at the bottom of the laundry hamper. Others were more tangible, harder to ignore, like the searching look in Teddy’s dark eyes as she gazed forlornly at Lew’s empty chair. They’d be sitting on the sofa together watching the evening news and she’d shift her gaze, tip her head back to look at Dick, and he could swear she was asking him the same, sad question, over and over, _Where’s Daddy gone? Is he ever coming home?_

What could he do but cuddle her a little closer and scratch her behind her ears and hope that in comforting her, he might also soothe the sharp pangs of longing in his own aching heart. 

But even though Lew’s absence had been downright unbearable at times, even though Dick’s first instinct when he woke up in the morning was to run his palm across the sheet where Lew used to lay, and even though he dropped his weary body onto the bed each night in relief that they were one day closer to being together again, Dick couldn’t shake the pervasive anxiety that began to creep in, a strange fear that they’d both changed so drastically over the past few months that they’d hardly recognize each other anymore. Strangers meeting for the first time, forced to abandon every notion they’d held about each other, more than a decade’s worth of things taken simply for granted. For a man not used to being intimidated, the prospect of starting all over again rattled Dick to his core. 

That was why he’d decided to drive this time instead of fly, hoping that feeling the miles passing under his feet might help prepare him for the change. It was why he’d brought Teddy, why he’d been so thankful to have Harry there with him too, as though these immutable reference points might give them a context, like a navigational star to help them find their bearings. The truth was that though Dick had missed him with a painful hunger so deep and so acute that he felt it in his bones, there was a part of him that was terrified to see Lew again. 

He’d gotten used to missing him. He’d gotten used to being alone, to defining the patterns of his life by the amount of work he had to accomplish each day and the hours of sunlight in which he had to do it, instead of constantly holding his finger up to the wind to check the weather of Lew’s mood. All of that would change when he came home. More than the disruption to his new routine, Dick feared that they’d slip back into the old ones; that, reeling in this alien orbit, they’d grasp at anything they could hold onto, and all the progress they’d both made would be quickly undone in their desperate search for something familiar. 

That was the thing about Lew’s drinking. More than anything else, it was familiar. Throughout their life together, his periods of sobriety had been so brief, so few and far between, that Dick was sincerely worried they’d discover that they’d grown apart, that what little they’d ever had in common had faded quietly into the past, like the sun dipping behind the jagged line of the snow-capped Alps. Who was Nix without his whiskey? Who was Dick without his long-suffering tolerance for it? He supposed that was what they’d have to find out now. That was the work of living sober, and if he were honest with himself, Dick wasn’t sure they were up to the task. 

Harry slowed the car as they neared the outskirts of the city. Far off in the distance, Dick could make out tiny pinpricks of the Chicago skyline against the darkness of the western horizon. 

“How’s this?” 

Dick looked up at the bright red GRAMMA’S KITCHEN sign advertising hot food 24 hours. 

“Fine,” he said. A few semi-trucks were filling up at the diesel pumps and through the broad front window, he saw a group of men he assumed to be Saturday morning regulars having coffee at one of the booths. Other than that, the place seemed deserted. His stomach growled. 

“Let’s get breakfast,” he said. “Then you can sack out for a while.” 

Harry eased the car into a parking space close to the door and killed the engine. He tugged his sleeve back to check his watch. “Wonder if Kitty’s up yet.”

“I wonder if Lew is.”

They looked at each other through the wan glow from the parking lot floodlights. Harry smiled. “Suppose we call and find out.”

Dick felt a flash of heat flow through his body, starting in his chest and radiating from there to his stomach and down through his legs, as though the blood in his veins had suddenly woken up to the fact that this was the day he’d been waiting for, not a month or next week or even tomorrow. It was today, just a few more hours, just a few hundred more miles down the road.

“Look,” Harry said, nodding toward the sign on the door. “Hot showers too. You sure you don’t want to shave?”

Dick laughed and dragged his blunt fingers through one side of his patchy beard and then the other. “You don’t think he’ll like it?” 

“I think he’ll hate it.” Harry leaned to his side to shove his arm through his coat sleeve. “And I can’t fucking wait.” 

An unexpected smile spread slowly across Dick’s face, paling all his feeble little fears in the fire of its glorious light. 

“Neither can I.”

* * *

Lew stood in the entryway, his thick wool coat draped over one arm. At his feet sat his two suitcases, the clothes and letters within all neatly folded and packed with care the night before. Though he tried to resist the urge to look out the sidelight window next to the heavy front door, his gaze seemed drawn there by some inexorable force, and every half minute or so he’d find himself pulling back the lace curtain to see whether anything had changed. But all he saw was the same flat lawn, wet and muddy in patches where the snow was melting, the same long, empty driveway that led to the main road and the bare, wind-swept prairie beyond it. 

“Oh good, I didn’t miss you.” 

Lew looked up to see Bradley step through the pocket doors that led to the grand living room, where he’d sat through countless lectures and group meetings over the past few months. The wood squeaked against its iron frame as Bradley slid the doors closed again behind him. 

“No.” Lew leaned back against the wall and tried to appear composed. “Still here.” 

Bradley nodded and folded his arms across his chest, fixing Lew with a reassuring smile. “How do you feel?”

“Great,” Lew said, more brusquely than he’d meant to. “Never better.” 

“Really?” 

Lew took a deep breath and felt his lungs falter as the air left them. He looked out the window again before meeting Bradley’s eyes. 

“Well, between you and me, Brad, I’m scared shitless.” 

Bradley's smile faded a bit but didn’t disappear altogether. “Completely natural.” 

“Not for me.” Lew smirked and let his gaze float wistfully into the space above Bradley’s head. When he spoke again, it sounded like he was talking only to himself. “Not without a drink, anyway.” 

“You’re ready, Lewis. I know you think you’re not, but you are.”

Lew chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment and thought about that. Ready. For what? That was the trouble. He had no idea what kind of world he was about to enter, or how it would receive him. He knew these people were professionals, that they’d seen it all many times before, and he should trust them, trust the program. But he couldn’t silence the urge to second-guess them all, to ask if perhaps there wasn’t someone more qualified to render their verdict on whether he was fit to be out there on his own again. Deep down, he supposed he was still clinging to the conviction that he was special in some way, set apart from the rest, and that they may have known thousands of drunks but never one quite like him. 

Instead he’d shaken their hands and offered his sincerest thanks for all their help. He’d promised to study the book faithfully and remember the slogans and attend the meetings and reach out the moment he felt a craving coming on. The only way they got through this was by leaning on each other; yes, he absolutely agreed. But for all the nice things they’d said about him, all the praise they’d lavished on his progress and the confidence they’d expressed in his ability to carry it out into the rest of his life, Lew just couldn’t shake the feeling that they were talking about a different man. Not him. Not the man he feared he’d become again once the practice jumps ended and his real war began. 

“Hey Bradley,” he said after a few quiet moments. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.“ A dark blur whizzed by in his periphery and his head swiveled to look out the window again. But it wasn’t him, just an ordinary car passing by on its way into town. 

“Yeah?” 

Lew looked back at him. He wasn’t sure if he ought to ask. Bradley’s day job kept him lousy with drunks to mentor into their fledgling sobriety; he didn’t need one more to take under his wing, certainly not one who lived on the other side of the country. But the reality was that Bradley was his only sober friend who knew about him, who really knew, and if his time there had convinced Lew of anything it was that any chance he had of quitting for good, any chance at all, depended entirely on his complete and total honesty. About everything. Who he was and what he felt and what he’d done and who he loved. If he had to keep hiding that, there was no hope for him. 

“I was wondering if you’d consider being my sponsor,” Lew said finally. “I mean, until I can find someone local.” 

Bradley let his eyes fall briefly to the floor before looking back up at Lew again. He nodded. “I’d be honored.” 

“Really?” For the first time in days, Lew felt a tiny flame of relief begin to kindle in the center of his chest. It was weak, but it was there. He smiled faintly. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” Bradley said. “You know where to find me.” 

Lew felt his gaze pulled back to the window and he lifted the curtain to watch as a car slowed and turned into the driveway. He stared a moment, rapt, not really believing his eyes until he saw the stark black letters against the bright yellow of the license plate, _NY - THE EMPIRE STATE_. The glare from the late day sun cloaked the interior in darkness, but through the dusky shadow, he swore he could see the outline of Dick’s rugged jaw, his sharp chin. His square shoulders, set straight ahead, refusing to yield. Dick. God, what a sight. 

“Is that him?” 

“Yeah.” Lew made several nervous movements with his hands, finally settling on raking his fingers through his hair. “That’s him.” 

“Hmmm.” Bradley was looking intently out the window, his brow furrowed in concentration. “You didn’t say he had a beard.” 

“What? He doesn’t.” Lew stopped, one half of his coat hanging limply at his side, and stared out the window again, worried for a moment that he’d been mistaken and that it was a different man taking slow and measured steps toward the front door. But it was him. It couldn’t be anyone else. 

“Jesus Christ,” Lew muttered softly, shaking his head. Just when he’d thought they knew everything about each other, couldn’t surprise each other if their lives depended on it, Dick had gone and grown a damn beard. 

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Bradley held out his hand. “Drop us a line when you get home.” 

“What? No.” Lew looked at Bradley’s hand and dismissed it with a little shake of his head. “I want you to meet him.” Which was the truth, at least in part. Also true was that his whole body had begun to tremble and sweat. 

Dick’s steps quickened as he came up the front walk and Lew glanced frantically back at Bradley for a moment. “Do I look alright?”

But Bradley didn’t have time to answer, just shrugged and nodded as they watched Dick’s shadow grow bigger through the frosted glass of the door. Lew reached for the doorknob, hesitating for just a moment before turning it and throwing it wide open. 

And there he was. After all those restless nights in a lonely twin bed listening to his roommate wheeze and cough and longing for the gentle roar of Dick’s breathing in sleep, deep and constant, like holding a conch to his ear. After all the letters he’d worried sounded the same, a broken record of transparent cheerfulness and forced wit that could never convey what he really felt, what he wished he could say to Dick. What he scarcely understood himself. After hearing his voice, thin and distant down the telephone line, and clenching his jaw to fight back the tears that sprung to his eyes every time Dick told him that he loved him and was proud of him. After seeing his face in dreams, touching him with such fearless tenderness, the surrender of opening to him, giving himself entirely, making up for everything. After all of that, here he was, standing on the porch with his coat unbuttoned and one side of his collar flipped up, chewing a wad of gum and looking like he hadn’t slept in days. 

“Sorry I’m late.” One corner of Dick’s mouth rose in a smile so subtle it might be invisible to the naked eye. But Lew saw it. 

“You’re right on time.” Lew’s voice broke before he could get all the words out. He cleared his throat. “How was the drive?” 

“Fine,” Dick said. Every part of him seemed calm and collected, all except for his right hand, which he kept stuffing in and out of his coat pocket, like he was worried about what might happen if he gave it too much slack. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” 

“Is she here?” Lew’s face broke into an uncontainable grin and he looked over Dick’s shoulder, trying to see out the window. “Where is she? In the car?” 

“Okay, two surprises.” Dick’s eyes darted to the side of the room, where Bradley had slowly receded once again toward the pocket doors, ready to slip through them if they didn’t take notice of him soon. 

“Oh. Sorry,” Lew stammered. “This is Bradley. He’s our - well, sort of our mother hen, I suppose.”

“Resident counselor.” Bradley gave Dick the same friendly, harmless smile Lew remembered from that first meeting. “You must be Dick. I’ve heard a lot,” he said, reaching out his hand and adding quietly, “all good, of course” when he saw Dick glance quickly at Lew, his brow furrowed in caution. 

Lew gave him a barely perceptible nod. “It’s alright,” he said softly. 

“Nice to meet you,” Dick said politely as he shook the offered hand. “Thank you for -” He looked back and forth between Bradley and Lew and laughed awkwardly. “Well, I guess I don’t know quite where to begin.” 

Bradley dropped Dick’s hand and slid his own into the back pockets of his trousers. “Thank him,” he said, nodding toward Lew. “He did all the work.” 

Dick’s hand once again rose from his side to reach toward Lew, and this time he didn’t pull it back, letting it come to rest gently on Lew’s left shoulder, his thumb pressed into the hollow below his collarbone. “He did, didn’t he?” 

Lew tried not to let it embarrass him but he had a sudden urge to look away, up at the ceiling beams or down at the oak floor, anywhere but Dick’s eyes. That was something he’d been working on, accepting praise gracefully instead of deflecting it like it might cut him if he let it get too close. But it was harder than he might have thought, and hardest of all when it came from Dick. 

“Well,” Lew finally said, nodding his head toward the door. “I suppose we ought to.” 

Dick picked up Lew’s big leather suitcase and the smaller travel case as Lew and Bradley said a quick and restrained goodbye, shaking hands and promising to be in touch. A gust of wind blew up as they stepped out onto the porch, catching the storm door and whipping it back against the siding with a loud crack. Lew swore under his breath in surprise and checked the spring to make sure it hadn’t broken. 

“Alright?” Dick asked him over his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Lew said, taking deep breaths to calm the racing of his heart. “Just the wind.”

He followed Dick down the walkway to the car, laughing in delight when he saw the passenger door open and Harry step out. 

“Harry!” 

“Hey buddy,” Harry said. “You miss me?”

“Desperately,” Lew said, and perhaps because there was some truth to it, or because that gap in Harry’s teeth never failed to evoke a brotherly sort of affection in him, or because he’d simply become aware in just that moment how terribly homesick he’d been, he pulled Harry into a tight embrace. Not the masculine, back-slapping kind they’d exchanged when each of Harry’s kids had been born or the staggering, drunken Officers Club kind, arms hooked around necks for support as they stumbled back to their billets, but a real hug, sincere and loving, the kind he’d rarely shared with anyone who wasn’t Dick. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Harry chuckled and slapped him a few times on the shoulder as he pulled away. “I know who you’re really here to see.” 

He opened the rear passenger door and in a frenzied blur of flapping ears and wagging auburn tail, Teddy hopped down onto the gravel, hip-checking Harry across the shins as she rushed to Lew’s side. 

“Teddy girl,” Lew murmured, kneeling down to bury his face in her thick, soft fur. “Oh my love, my love.” He kissed her nose, the top of her head, let her nuzzle his ears and lick his face. Then he patted his shoulders and said ‘up, girl’ and she stood up onto her back legs, draping her front paws over his shoulders as he raked his fingertips up and down her back. Their trick, Dick called it, and Lew didn’t know if it was the vigorous back-scratching or the sense that she was asserting dominance over him, but he was the only one she’d hug like this, and he loved her for it.

He snapped his fingers and pointed to the open car door and Teddy hopped back up onto her bed on the seat. Brushing off his hands, he stood and picked up one of his suitcases. Dick took the other and they walked together to the back of the car, where the open trunk door made a sort of privacy screen for them. Dick shuffled his and Harry’s smaller bags around to make room for Lew’s cases and then, without a word, wrapped his arms around Lew’s ribs, his beard tickling Lew’s neck as he pressed his forehead to Lew’s shoulder. Lew didn’t say a thing, just held him close, one hand on the back of his head as they swayed gently side to side, rocking each other back into a world where they never had to worry about who might be watching. 

There was a brief disagreement over who ought to drive. Dick insisted he was fine to keep going. Harry thought he should take over so the two of them could reacquaint themselves in the back seat, and he’d pretend not to know what they were up to, “y’know, for old time’s sake.” But in the end it was Lew who took the first shift, sliding confidently into the driver’s seat and pausing to hold out his hand to Dick.

“I believe you have something of mine.” 

A smirk floated across Dick’s face and he lifted his hips off the seat to dig his index finger into the watch pocket of his trousers. 

“Thanks for hanging onto it for me,” Lew said when Dick dropped the ring into his open palm. He slipped it back onto his finger and started the engine. 

“Hey, I’m dying to know,” Harry said, leaning forward to rest his chin on the front seatback as Lew began guiding the car down the bumpy gravel drive. “What do you think of Leif Erikson over here?”

Lew hummed and reached across the seat to stroke Dick’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. Dick narrowed one eye, as though warning him to think carefully how he answered. 

“You know, it’s starting to grow on me.” 

Harry reached forward to stroke Dick’s other cheek. “Me too.” 

“Alright.” Dick batted their hands away. “Let’s get going, we’re burning daylight here.” 

Lew flipped down the visor and retrieved his sunglasses from the pocket. Sliding them onto his face, he got a strange feeling that he’d only had maybe once or twice since the war, when he and Dick and Harry had been together like this. It felt very much like no time has passed at all between then and now, and that a giant hand could reach down from out of the sky, pick them up and set them down again in Normandy, and everything would be just the same. The three of them, working together, each with his own job to do. He knew it now as he’d known it then, a truth that the years had only sharpened: these were the people he could depend on, who saw all that was good and terrible in him and stood by him anyway. If that wasn’t a family, he didn’t know what one was. 

When he reached the end of the drive he looked both ways and turned left, heading into the fiery pink riot of the setting sun.

* * *

It had been dark for hours by the time Lew pulled the car up to the gaudy orange awning of a Howard Johnson’s just outside of Rockford. He’d stopped to fill the gas tank before they’d crossed the Wisconsin border, warning Dick and Harry that he had no intention of giving any money to the state responsible for sending Joe McCarthy to the Senate, so they’d better load up on Cherry Mash and Nut Goodies because they weren’t stopping again until they got to Illinois. 

“What if I need to take a piss?” Harry had asked. 

Lew hadn’t even thought about that and he cocked his head to the side as though giving the question careful consideration.

“I suppose that’d be alright.” 

But as it turned out, Teddy was the only one who’d needed a bathroom break. Harry had fallen asleep somewhere north of Madison, slack-jawed and slouched against the window. In the absence of his disarming humor, Lew realized how thankful he was to have Harry there with them to diffuse the tension and blunt the sharp edges of this strange new chance at redemption he and Dick now held in their clumsy hands. He wondered if it was anything like the way Harry must have felt when Kitty had placed a baby in his arms that first time, if he’d looked into the tiny face of his child with the same trembling joy and terrifying wonder that Lew felt along every mile of that drive, watching for the green light he knew was hovering up there in the distance somewhere. 

But first, HoJo’s. Chicken salad sandwiches and cube steak and ice cream for Dick. Fake names in the motel registry because they could never be too careful. Harry’s nonchalance in exchanging keys when he realized they’d given him the single. 

“This is you guys,” he’d said upon seeing the queen bed, and took the key from Lew’s hand before it even occurred to him to protest. “You kids have fun.” 

And then he’d left them standing there with their suitcases in their hands, alone for the first time since that frigid morning in late December. It felt like years ago now, and he and Dick just stared dumbly at each other for a moment until Teddy whined and tugged at the leash, as if to tell them that they could stand there all night for all she cared, but she was going to sleep. Which she did, as soon as Lew brought her bed in from the car, turning two circles on the cushion and flopping down with a weary sigh. 

Through the wall behind the bed, Lew could hear the drone of the eleven o’clock news from Harry’s room. He had the volume turned up louder than was probably necessary and Lew figured that was for their benefit, but the likelihood of their having any sex at all, much less the kind that required drowning out by the noise of a television, was so small it made the whole thing feel comical. Lew rolled to his side and turned off the bedside lamp, sending the room into darkness except for the wedge of light from the half-open bathroom door. He closed his eyes and listened to the splash of water, the tapping of the razor against the edge of the sink as Dick shaved off his beard. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said quietly when Dick lifted the covers to lie down beside him. 

“I would have done it weeks ago,” Dick said. He lay facing Lew, one hand tucked under his pillow. “I just wanted you to see it.” 

Lew laid his palm on Dick’s cheek, still cool and damp from the water. He’d nearly forgotten how smooth Dick’s face was just after he shaved, how he used to brush his cheeks, so rough by comparison, against Dick’s soft skin, breathing in the clean scent of Ivory soap and shaving cream. He rubbed his thumb slowly along the ridge of Dick’s cheekbone. Dick closed his eyes and shifted his body a little closer on the bed. 

“What are you thinking about?” Lew murmured. 

The corner of Dick’s mouth wrinkled in a coy smirk, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Just wondering what a guy’s gotta do to get a kiss around here.” 

Lew exhaled a small, breathy laugh and wet his lips, leaned forward to press them to Dick’s full, firm mouth. The kiss was soft and chaste at first, and then Lew felt the wet tip of Dick’s tongue nudge the seam of his lips, and he opened his mouth, brushed his tongue against Dick’s, his hand falling to Dick’s chest as Dick’s arm tightened around his waist. But when he felt Dick’s hand pressed flat against the small of his back to pull their hips together, he moved away, breaking the kiss and laying his head back on the pillow. 

For a moment, worry and confusion flashed in Dick’s eyes, and then his face softened into a weak smile. 

“We don’t have to do anything,” he said. “We can just sleep.” 

Lew took a deep breath. He swallowed and his throat felt tight. “I want to. I just don’t know if I can.” 

Dick nodded. “It’s alright.” But his voice sounded so thin and sad, like at any moment he may start crying. The thought of disappointing him again was almost too much to bear. But the alternative wasn’t any better. It was as though every humiliation he’d ever felt in his life had all converged and taken the physical form of his lifeless little cock, that it didn’t matter if it never happened again, the wound to his spirit and to his conception of himself as a man would take a long time to heal. It made him sick to his stomach, the idea of asking Dick for more time when he’d already waited so long.

“It’s really not,” Lew said, breaking Dick’s gaze. “It’s not alright.” 

He could hear Dick taking long, pensive breaths in and out of his nose. “Same old trouble?” he asked carefully.

“Not exactly the same.” 

Lew didn’t know why he felt so shy talking about it. He almost had, back when he’d first begun to feel the change in his body. It was like after an endless, dead winter, everything was waking up again. But it was unpredictable; Lew found he had no control over his desire, which was more likely to surprise him in the least opportune, most public moment than it was to bend to his stubborn will when he closed his eyes in the shower and imagined Dick was there with him. He’d wanted to tell him about it, to share this little victory, but he hadn’t known how to begin. _“My Love, it snowed eighteen inches yesterday, we all got in on the shoveling and also, I’m having orgasms again”_. It made him blush to even think of it, much less put it to paper. So he’d kept it to himself, hiding from the man with whom he’d shared the most intimate details of his life for nearly thirteen years now. 

Dick blinked at him through the darkness, waiting. Lew sighed. 

“I’ve just gotta get out of my head.” 

Dick hummed. “Maybe I can help.” 

A demure smile spread slowly across Lew’s face. “Maybe.”

“Alright if I try?” 

They looked into each other’s eyes for a brief moment, and then Lew nodded.

“Good,” Dick said simply. He unbuttoned Lew’s pajamas and spread them open wide, pressing Lew back against the mattress with firm fingertips on his chest. Lew closed his eyes as he felt Dick’s mouth trailing a line of kisses down his chest and stomach, the gentle pull as he tugged at the drawstring of his pants, and then cool air against his skin before the heat of Dick’s mouth enveloped him. 

He groaned and arched his hips up off the bed, spreading his thighs wide across the mattress. But even as Dick really went to work in earnest, taking him in deep and flicking his tongue across those places that used to drive Lew to the edge of madness, he felt his desire slowly waning, fading out like a dying star, and there was nothing he could do to bring it back. His body went still and soon Dick did the same, laying his head on Lew’s naked hip and looking up at him, his brow wrinkled in sympathy. 

“I’m sorry, honey.” 

“Dick - don’t.” Lew reached for him, pulling him up to lie beside him again. “It’s not your fault.” 

“I know,” Dick said. “I’m still sorry.”

“I’m not.” He tried to give Dick his most reassuring smile as he pulled his pajamas up over his hips again, but the effort tired him and he doubted Dick was convinced. 

“But you didn’t even come,” Dick said with a feeble laugh, and Lew couldn’t help but pull him close, fold him in his arms and laugh with him. A fine romance this was. Against his hip, he could still feel the warm weight of Dick’s erection. Lew slid his hand down between them to press against it.

“Let me take care of this.” 

“No,” Dick said petulantly. “I wanted you…” But his voice trailed off, swallowed by his ragged breathing, and he pressed back against Lew’s hand. It gave him an idea. 

“It works if I’m by myself,” he said. “I mean, if it’s just me. Alone.”

Dick opened his eyes. “You want me to leave?” 

“No,” Lew chuckled. “I mean if it’s just me.” He raised his eyebrows and then Dick seemed to get it. 

“Oh. Do you want to do that now?” 

Lew slipped his hand under the hem of his pajamas and his body responded. He nodded, feeling his cock swell in his own familiar grip. Dick tucked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and wriggled out of them, and Lew watched him begin to touch himself in confident, unhurried strokes. 

Dick’s body had always done whatever he’d wanted it to, and Lew supposed he was a bit jealous, but he was in awe of it too. The strength and vitality in that spartan frame, how comfortable he always seemed in his skin. Never embarrassed, never ashamed, never scared to push himself and find his limits, usually discovering that he could always go a little harder, a little faster, find something left to burn even when he thought the tank was dry. Dick’s body; how Lew’s hands had itched to touch it, how he’d put it on show and virtually offered himself up on a plate to him. Christ how they used to fuck, such urgency, such passion that no amount of caution or secrecy could dim. Dick’s body; lustful, proud, forbidden until it wasn’t, his and not his, no separation, the two of them together. His forearm burning, the scrape of Dick’s knuckles against his, the dark, musky scent of their sex, quiet moans slipping from their wet lips, the wave building, coming closer, the sweat trickling between his thighs, the final rise and clench and then the jump, the free fall, the jerks and and pulses and floating gently back down to earth. Dick’s body, melting into his. 

Lew rolled onto his back, staring up at the popcorn ceiling as he caught his breath. Next to him, he could hear Dick breathing too, short, shallow huffs through his nose. Lew turned his head to look at his face. Dick looked back at him and smiled hesitantly. 

“I guess we have to start somewhere.” 

Lew closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to Dick’s sweating brow. He felt Dick’s hand give his hip two light pats and then the mattress creaked and shifted as he got out of bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. The post-orgasm lethargy was only compounded by the long drive and the emotional shock of being with Dick again and soon he felt his body growing heavy. He turned to his side and nearly jumped out of his skin when he opened his eyes to find two black, wet eyes staring back at him through the darkness. 

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Dick called over the rush of water from the faucet. 

“She was so quiet, I forgot she was here!”

Lew reached out to pet Teddy’s glossy head and scratch behind her ears. 

“What’s the matter girl, can’t sleep?” 

She let out a little wine, rose halfway onto her back legs and sat down again. The muscles of her brow twitched above her pleading eyes. 

“Alright,” Lew said. He snapped his fingers and pointed at her bed across the room. “Back to bed.”

She sat there looking at him a moment longer, then trotted reluctantly back to her bed and lay down. Dick came back into the room and switched on the nightstand lamp. 

“She sure missed her Daddy,” he said as he rubbed a wet washcloth over the stain on the sheet. He scrutinized Lew’s bare chest and stomach, spreading the open flaps of his pajamas. Lew looked down and watched as Dick wiped away a streak of come just below his navel. “I missed him too,” Dick said quietly as he tied Lew’s drawstring.

Lew buttoned his shirt and sunk down further into the bed, closer to Dick, and his voice dropped to a sweet murmur. “You did?”

Dick hummed and nodded, sliding one arm under Lew’s neck and around his shoulder. He draped his other arm around Lew’s waist. “Did you miss me?” 

Lew sighed and laced his fingers through the short tufts of Dick’s soft, clean hair. “So much it hurt, baby.”

“I hope you never have to go away like that again,” Dick mumbled drowsily, and Lew felt the flash of something sharp and cold in his heart, like a sudden, icy draft had just blown through the door, blowing away their clothes and blankets, leaving nothing to protect them. 

“I hope so too.” 

He couldn’t promise anything; he didn’t dare. He just kept twisting his fingers in Dick’s hair, brushing his thumb back and forth over his temple. They shared a brief, melancholy smile and then Lew lifted himself onto his elbow to reach across Dick and turn off the light. Just before he did, he heard the jingle of metal tags. 

“Darling, we talked about this. You sleep in your bed.”

But Teddy was insistent, resting her head on the edge of the mattress and wagging her tail impatiently. 

Dick sat up and rubbed the back of her neck. “I think this is my fault.”

“Richard.” Lew’s eyes lit up in affectionate rebuke. “What have you done.” 

“She was so sad,” Dick said sheepishly as he raked his fingers through the ruffles of her chest. “And we were so lonely without you.” 

“I can’t believe you,” Lew muttered, shaking his head. “All that training.” 

“She really did keep the bed warm.” Dick looked up at Lew with a contrite little smile, and Lew couldn’t help himself. 

“Alright, fine,” he said in concession. “One more night.” 

He patted the mattress and Teddy leapt up onto the bed in one quick, graceful arc. Dick turned onto his side and Lew pulled the covers over them, sliding up close to lay his chest against Dick’s naked back. He knew that it wouldn’t last, that in a few minutes the space between them would grow hot and damp with sweat and they’d both turn away from each other as their bodies fell into sleep. So he enjoyed it while he could, the gentle rise and fall of Dick’s ribs under his arm, his forehead nestled in the valley between Dick’s shoulder blades, and down at the foot of the bed, the warm weight of their dog leaning heavily against his shins, her chin resting on his knee.

* * *

Lew was on the phone when Dick got home from the grocery store. It seemed like he was on the phone a lot lately, if not with Bradley then with one of his new friends from the group he’d started going to in Monticello, the nearest town large enough to have one. They met on Tuesday nights in the basement of a Presbyterian church and Lew always came home wired from the sugar and the caffeine. 

Dick set the grocery bags on the counter and turned to lean against it, his palms propped on the ledge on either side of his hips. Lew was slouched casually in his chair at the table with one arm slung over the back, the phone cord stretched out in a wavy line from where it hung on the wall next to the fridge. He gave Dick a flirty smile and tipped his head back in a quick nod. 

“Did you try HALT?” he was saying to whoever was on the other line. “That’s where I always start.” 

Dick recognized the acronym. HALT stood for _Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired_ and they’d gotten a lot of miles out of it since Lew had come home. He loved the simplicity of it, how any time he stumbled or lost his balance he could run through that list of triggers and usually land on the culprit. It became a sort of shorthand with them, which was a relief to Dick. Sometimes, when Lew’s face would go blank and his eyes distant and unreadable, Dick had to fight every urge inside of him not to ask was he alright, did he need something, what could he do to help. Because he knew where that road led, and once he’d started down that path, it wouldn’t be long and he’d be back to thinking he had control, that if he just kept Lew busy enough or comfortable enough or happy enough, he could somehow prevent him from ever again craving the deep and profound relief he used to get from whiskey. 

So it was good that he could touch Lew’s elbow and Lew could take his hand and just say “halt”. 

“Which one?” Dick would sometimes ask, and Lew would sometimes tell him. Other times he’d pick up the phone, or read from the Big Book, or take Teddy out for a long walk. And Dick would let him go, trusting that he would find whatever he needed and trying to get comfortable with not knowing what that was anymore. If he ever did. 

Dick revolved his hand at his wrist, trying to send the signal to wrap it up, it was supper time. Lew nodded and held up one finger. Dick turned around and began unloading the grocery bags, trying not to make too much of a racket as he opened cupboards in search of measuring cups and sheet pans. Over the din, Lew did his best to disentangle himself from the conversation. 

“Yep. Yep. Well, that’s - exactly. Of course.” 

Dick glanced over his shoulder. Lew had stood and was moving slowly toward the wall, as though narrowing the distance between the cradle and the receiver might somehow end the conversation faster. Finally, after another series of “alright”s and “will do”s, he hung up. Dick looked up from unwrapping a white butcher-papered bundle. 

“Everything okay?” He dropped a square of ground beef into a heavy stoneware mixing bowl with a wet ‘smack’. 

“I think so,” Lew said. “For tonight anyway.” He took one of the empty grocery bags from the counter and folded it flat, not saying anything else, and Dick didn’t pry. Perhaps more than any other aspect of the program, Lew had taken the anonymous part very deeply to heart, and rarely divulged any of the private struggles or secret griefs they shared with each other. And Dick was getting used to that too. 

“You know,” Lew continued hesitantly, “Tuesday’s an open meeting.” 

“Yeah?” Dick asked. He cracked an egg into a custard cup and began beating it with a fork. “What does that mean?” 

“It means spouses are welcome.” 

Dick stopped beating the egg. His shoulders rose and then fell in a deep sigh. He turned around to face him. 

“Lew.” 

“I’m getting my ninety day chip.”

Dick’s face softened into a weak smile. “Do they know?”

Lew shook his head. He began folding up the other grocery bags, smoothing them flat against the counter. “But I was thinking maybe I should tell them.”

Dick turned back to the counter. He picked up the recipe card and tried to read it but he lost his place and couldn’t remember what he’d already done. A nervous frustration began to spread through his body and he opened and closed several drawers, unsure what he was looking for. 

“I gather you disagree,” he heard Lew say calmly behind his back. 

“No,” Dick said. “I didn’t say that.” 

“It’s anonymous, remember?” Lew said. “It’s right in the name.” 

“Yeah,” Dick muttered cynically. “And I’m sure it would stay that way too. If small towns hate anything, it’s gossip.” 

“Come on, Dick.” Lew crossed the kitchen to stand against the counter next to Dick, leaning into the space between Dick and the mess of supper things on the counter. “They already know.”

“Not from us!” Dick dropped the set of measuring spoons he was holding and they made a tinny jangle as they fell to the floor. He took a breath to calm himself. “That’s the point, Lew. That’s why they tolerate us. They don’t bother us because we don’t bother them.” 

Lew sniffed. “Well maybe it’s time we did.” 

“Oh God,” Dick said wearily. “Can we just make supper and save the consciousness raising for tomorrow?” 

Lew folded his arms across his chest and clenched his jaw. “Sure,” he said, his voice tight. “Whatever. In any case, I’ll be getting my chip and I’d like for you to be there. Even if you want me to pretend we’ve never met.”

Dick dropped his shoulders and looked into Lew’s face, saw the hurt feelings laced into the lines of his brow and the tiny flecks of hazel in his deep brown eyes. 

“Honey.” He wiped his hands on the dish towel and then wrapped his arms around Lew’s shoulders. “I’ll be there,” he murmured against the side of Lew’s forehead, and then said it again, softer. “Of course I’ll be there.” 

Lew didn’t hug him back, just stood there with his arms crossed, looking down at the counter. “What’s all this, anyway?” he asked, still sullen. 

Dick stepped away from him and handed him the recipe card. 

“ _‘Here’s What’s Cookin’ From the Kitchen of Kitty Welsh’_ ,” Lew read. He looked up and smiled in spite of his anger. “You’re making Kitty’s meatloaf?” 

“ _We’re_ making Kitty’s meatloaf,” Dick said. “What do I do after I add the egg?” 

Lew studied the card for a few seconds, mumbling to himself. “‘Mix in three quarters of a cup of bread crumbs’,” he read. “Or she says you can use oatmeal instead.” 

“Yeah,” Dick said. “I saw that so I got both. Which one do you think is better?” 

“Hell if I know,” Lew shrugged. “Should we call and ask?” 

“No,” Dick said emphatically. “We can figure this out on our own. We’re almost forty, for God’s sake.” 

“Hey, speak for yourself.” Lew’s voice was muffled by the open door of the fridge. “I’m still in my late-mid thirties.” 

Dick had settled on using a combination of the two and was scanning the recipe one more time when he noticed an ingredient he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there as he’d carefully checked items off his list at the grocery store. 

“Oh shit.”

The fridge door closed with a rattle of clinking bottles and Lew stood next to it, his eyes wide in shock. 

“What?” 

Dick breathed an exasperated sigh through his nose. “I forgot the Worcestershire sauce.” 

A wry grin began to stretch across Lew’s face. He held out a small, slender bottle. 

“Well lucky for you, I used to love it in a Bloody Mary.”

A quiet laugh bubbled up from Dick’s chest and he let his eyes fall shut for just longer than a blink. Then he picked up a vegetable peeler from the counter and held it out to Lew. 

“Here, I’ll trade ya.”

He felt Lew’s fingertips brush against his as he took the bottle from his hand.

* * *

Dick did, of course, go to Lew’s chip ceremony the following Tuesday, watching proudly from the hard metal seat of a folding chair as the group leader called Lew up to the podium and shook his hand. Lew didn’t try to offer any philosophy or hard-won wisdom, just thanked him, and the rest of the group, and by extension, all the people at home who bore the brunt of the struggle and made it all worthwhile. Dick looked at the wives, rapt by his effortless charm and magnetic smile, saw their eyes skip around the room as they tried to land on the lucky girl who made it all worthwhile for him. He looked back up to find Lew’s gaze fixed steady on his. 

“Thank you,” he said one more time, and then with a humble little bow of his head, he stepped away. Dick was still clapping when Lew sat back down in the empty chair next to his. 

There was the usual spread of coffee and store-bought cookies set up for after the ceremony, but they didn’t stick around for it. Instead, they took the long way home, driving first around Pleasure Lake with its little cottages still boarded up for the winter, then the much larger White Lake, where Mitch and Arthur had their resort. Lew held the medallion in his hand the whole time, turning it over between his fingers and rubbing his thumb over the engraving. Perhaps it gave him confidence to see tangible proof of how far he’d come, or perhaps it was the hint of spring through the window, cracked open to let in the thick night air. Whatever the reason, Lew seemed more at ease than Dick had seen him in a long time. 

“When I make it to a year, I want you to give me my chip,” he said as he slowed the car to a stop at a T intersection. “I mean, if you don’t already have plans.”

Dick looked at him from across the seat. His profile was lit up in a glowing line of red from the blinking light of the turn signal and Dick was overwhelmed with a sudden urge to kiss him. Instead, he reached out to lay his hand on the back of Lew’s neck. 

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” 

They drove on, talking about the program and the steps. Lew told him he’d finished his list of people he’d wronged and was ready to start making amends. As he rattled through them, Dick thought about his own progress, which had stalled out somewhere in the middle. The first few steps had been the easy ones for him; he’d been humbling himself before God for as long as he could remember. But then Lew came home and they had so much to do to get ready for spring planting. He didn’t have time for lists and amends, and anyway, what had he really done that was so bad? Anyone in his position would have done the same. 

But as he watched Lew devote himself to the work, as he listened to Lew’s end of all the phone calls, starting with an absurd attempt to apologize to Harry for a litany of wrongs that Harry couldn’t even remember, he’d been so drunk himself, Dick began to see the value of step nine. It wasn’t about apologizing and seeking forgiveness, or not just that. It was about change. Acknowledging the hurt he’d caused and taking deliberate actions to set things right. Step nine was about freedom. 

So Dick thought about it for a week and then began making his own list. Harry was on there, and Kitty too. His family. Basically anyone to whom he’d ever told a lie or pushed away in his tangled, misguided efforts to shield Lew from ever taking any responsibility for the consequences of his drinking. Lew was there with him at the kitchen table when he called his mother one Saturday afternoon in April. 

She told him she didn’t have much time because she was supposed to help serve a funeral luncheon at the church later on and still hadn’t iced the two sheet cakes she’d made, so he got right to the point. 

“I won’t keep you,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize to you.” 

“Whatever for, dear?” she asked breezily. 

“Well, it’s -” he said haltingly. He’d planned out what he wanted to say, just not how to begin. “It has to do with Lewis actually.”

“Lewis? Why, what’s he done?” Dick couldn’t help but notice the tinge of worried suspicion in her voice. He looked at Lew and raised his eyebrows. Lew nodded, the gesture conveying both permission and encouragement. Dick soldiered on. 

“Lew is -” he looked into his face one more time. Lew smiled patiently but his eyes were uncertain. “Lew’s an alcoholic, mom. And I’m calling because I’ve -”

But it was clear she’d stopped listening. 

“Oh dear Lord,” she mumbled regretfully, and then her tone changed, became angry and condescending. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew it, Richard, I knew this would come to no good.” 

“No - mom,” he stammered, thrown off by her response. “It’s good. We’re dealing with it. He hasn’t had a drink since Christmas.”

Through the line, he heard her let out a clipped, sarcastic laugh. “Is that what he told you?” 

“Mom.” Now he was getting angry too. He took several short, harsh breaths through his nose. “I’m calling to apologize for how I’ve treated you because of Lew’s drinking.” He said it slowly, each syllable deliberate, like he was reading from a script. She was quiet, so he kept going. 

“I’ve lied to you and canceled plans to visit. I’ve put his drinking ahead of you, ahead of everything, really, and I’m sorry.” 

She hummed and was quiet for a moment. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath as she wound up for the punch. “Well dear, I’m just glad your father isn’t here to see this, after what happened with your grandfather. It’s a shame,” she muttered. “It’s just a shame.” 

Dick blinked and shook his head. He knew he should let it go. But then he looked at Lew, smiling patiently at him across the table, and he thought about truth and freedom and the whole reason they were doing this in the first place, and he just couldn’t. 

“Mom, I want to tell you something. It’s something Dad said to me just before he died.”

She sighed impatiently. “What is it, dear? I need to get to the church.” 

“I know,” Dick said. “I’ll be quick.”

“Well say it, then.” 

“We were all home. You and Ann had gone to the grocery store and you asked me to look after him for an hour in case he needed his pills, and so I did. We did. Lew was with me.” 

The line had gone still. Dick’s voice grew quiet and contemplative as he continued. 

“He was tired, I remember that. He slept a lot those last few days. Before he fell asleep, he shook Lew’s hand and told him he was glad to know him.” 

Dick looked at Lew. A disoriented look had come into his face, his brow wrinkled and eyes dark and inscrutable.

“And then it was just him and me. He asked me to move up close because his voice was so weak, but he told me, and I’ll never forget this, Mom. He told me that he’d never understand it, but if baching it with Lew made me happy, then we had his blessing.” 

“Your father didn’t say that.” 

Dick wanted to laugh, but he stopped himself. “Yes he did, mom,” he said calmly. 

“He would never.” 

“Well he did.” 

“Richard, I don’t have time to argue with you, I’ve got these cakes to ice and the funeral -”

“The funeral luncheon,” Dick said. “Yeah, I know. I’ll let you go, Mom.” 

“Call next Saturday, but not until after four, I’ve got quilting bee.” 

“Alright mom.” Dick stood up, turning his back so Lew wouldn’t see frustration in his face. “I’ll talk to you next week.”

He hung up and just stood there for a moment, staring at all the little notes and coupons and letters and photos they’d tacked up to the corkboard next to the phone. There was no lifting of a heavy burden or sweet breath of liberty. Instead, he had the same cold, sinking feeling in his chest that he usually got as they drove home from Lancaster, as the realization set in that no matter how polite they were or how many jobs they did around the house or how many holidays they dutifully showed up for, they’d never get the open-armed reception he was longing for, that he felt was owed to them. All his life he'd tried to be a good son, but he was beginning to see that it really didn’t matter. 

He looked over his shoulder at Lew. “I’m going to make coffee. You want some coffee?” 

Lew just gave him an ambiguous little shake of his head and shrugged. Dick walked to the cupboard and began scooping coffee grounds into the metal basket of the percolator. Coffee. When all else failed, he had that. 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Lew asked after he’d set the percolator on the burner and sat back down at the table. 

“I don’t think I did it right.” 

“Sure you did,” Lew said confidently. “That was textbook amends right there.” 

Dick huffed a laugh. “Thanks for being here.” 

A dreamy, nostalgic glow floated into Lew’s eyes, and when he spoke again, his voice was thin and distant. 

“I don’t remember that,” he said. “With your dad.” He looked down at the table for a moment. When he looked back at Dick, his face was stricken. “I’ve forgotten so much.” 

“It’ll come back.” Dick tried to smile at Lew but succeeded only in emphasizing the sad truth with which they now reckoned. “And when it doesn’t, I’ll remind you.” 

Lew looked away again, out the window this time. He blinked his eyes a few times and Dick saw his lips purse, like he was biting the insides of his cheeks. 

“The bad stuff too,” he said, and looked back at Dick. “Don’t leave anything out.” 

Dick didn’t know what to say to that. His instinct was to fold Lew in his arms and tell him that there had been no bad stuff, that all of it was good, even if it felt bad at the time. That ‘bad’ and ‘good’ were just words, just sounds, and not nearly big enough to hold all the things they’d been through together and done to one another. The endless invisible ways they had of hurting each other and loving each other, of protecting and caring for and standing up for one other. Good, bad, what did it matter? All of that was in the past now. It made them who they were, but it didn’t define them. It didn’t seal their fate. They could do anything, as long as they still had each other. 

But Dick didn’t know how to say any of this and the coffee had started to bubble vigorously against the glass top of the percolator, so he just reached across the table and took Lew’s hand in his, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the band on his finger. 

“Okay,” he said. “The bad stuff too.”

* * *

The dinner had been Lew’s idea. He’d been dragging his feet for weeks with this particular amends and had decided finally to just embrace it. The shame and humiliation, the likelihood that it would result in a mouthful of Arthur’s fist. It was nothing less than he deserved and he felt a strange sort of freedom in that, knowing that whatever happened, justice would be served. So he might as well enjoy it over a nice ribeye and a smoky salmon pate. 

For a while it seemed like they’d all forgotten the unpleasantness of last summer and were just four friends who hadn’t seen each other in too long, making up for lost time by laughing a little louder, showing a little more interest in the details of each other’s lives than they perhaps really felt. But sometime between the salads and the steaks, after the waitress had set a fresh martini in front of both Mitch and Arthur, Dick looked at him and gave him a little nod, as if to say “now”, and Lew took a sip of water and sat up straighter in his chair. 

“I suppose you guys have noticed something different about me.”

“New tie?” Mitch asked drily, sipping carefully from the rim of his glass, but it was so full that a little gin spilled over the side and down the backs of his fingers anyway. 

Lew smiled and looked down at his shirt, sliding his rough palm down the blue and white houndstooth pattern of his tie. “Ah, no. Not that.”

“We noticed,” Arthur said simply. “Is everything alright? You’re not terminally ill or something, are you?” 

“No,” Lew said. “Not that I know of. I’m just done with it. It…” He looked back and forth between them, his eyes finally landing on Dick’s. “Well, I suppose it was just time.” 

He saw them exchange a knowing look with each other across the table. Arthur rubbed the stem of his glass between his thumb and forefinger but didn’t drink. After another awkward moment, Lew began his apologies. They paid him the courtesy of listening patiently as he recreated the details of a day they’d all have just as soon forgotten. They smiled and nodded their forgiveness, promising that it was all water under the bridge. They made it as easy on him as it could be and by the end of it, Lew got the sense that everyone was just ready to move on and be friends again, himself most of all. 

“We’ve missed cards night,” Mitch said after the waitress had set their steaming plates before them. “Playing euchre with the Endertons isn’t near as much fun. Marilyn cheats, you know.” 

“So does he.” Lew nodded at Dick. 

“What?” Dick’s voice rose high in protest. “I do not. I just forget the rules sometimes.”

“Thursday night,” Arthur said. “Our place. Dick, you’re on my team.” 

The laughter was easier after that, the conversation lighter, the warmth and affection flowing among them like a soft summer breeze. But even as they seemed to finally put the matter to rest, Lew thought he sensed a change in Dick. As the evening wore on and everyone else became more animated, he seemed to fade slowly away, receding little by little into his own thoughts. Lew told himself that Dick was just tired, or that he’d simply exhausted his already meager supply of social energy for the day. But deep down, he knew that something wasn’t right.

He was taciturn on the ride home, responding only in monosyllables to Lew’s lighthearted postmortem, which felt trite and forced next to Dick’s stony silence. He tried to get Dick interested in a baseball game on the radio and, after that failed, Martin and Lewis live from the Copa. But Dick acted like he didn’t even hear it. Lew could feel his mind reaching for the safety of its old patterns, and how easy it would be to throw up his hands and say “fuck this”. To retreat into his own silent fortress and not emerge until Dick felt like being nice to him again, whenever the hell that might be.

But he had to try. Jesus Christ, at the very least he had to do that. He turned off the radio and the glacial silence expanded around them. Lew felt an urge to hold his breath so as not to disturb it.

“Alright,” he said finally. “What’s going on?”

Dick didn’t take his eyes off the road, didn’t give any indication he’d heard Lew at all, except for a sound so quiet and impassive it was hardly audible.

“It’s nothing.”

“Dick, come on.” Lew shifted to face him and stretched his arm across the seatback. “You haven’t said two words since dinner. Just tell me, what’d I do?”

Deep creases formed in Dick’s brow. He opened his mouth to speak but then just closed it again with a heavy sigh. Lew waited, and when he didn’t say any more, he turned back to face the windshield again, muttering “fine” as he slid further away to lean against the door. He was bracing himself for a night of ignoring each other, of giving Dick plenty of space to work out whatever was bothering him and hoping all would be well again by the morning, when Dick asked him in a calm, still voice why he’d done it.

Lew turned to look at him again, not understanding.

“What?”

“Mitch,” Dick said softly. He glanced at Lew for a brief moment before turning his attention back to the road. “Why did you kiss him that day?”

Lew felt his defenses going up and he struggled to stay calm. “I didn’t kiss him.”

“Close enough,” Dick said. “You would have, if Artie hadn’t seen you.”

Lew didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing as the weak excuses and paltry justifications piled up in his head.

“You said you’d never cheat on me. And I believed you. I forgave you.” Dick looked at him again. “I just want to know why.”

Lew closed his eyes and dragged his palm down his face, pressing his fingertips hard to his eyelids.

“Hell Dick, why did I do anything back then? Because I was drunk. That’s all.”

“But there were plenty of things you didn’t do while you were drunk,” Dick said logically. “You didn’t murder anyone. You didn’t rob a bank or jump off a bridge.” He stopped abruptly, and his tone became plaintive again. “So why him? Why’d you have to do _that_?”

Lew shook his head slowly, truly at a loss. “I don’t know,” he said in a quiet, hollow voice. He stared at the dash until the numbers on the radio dial all blurred together. “Because he was flirting with me. Because it felt good.”

“Flirting?”

“No.” Lew shut his eyes tight, as though he could go back and erase it all if only he concentrated hard enough. “That he was attracted to me. That someone like him could find me attractive.”

It sounded so pathetic when he said it out loud like that, and he began to see himself how they all must have seen him back then, a vain, ridiculous caricature of man, without the self-respect to recognize what a cliche he’d become. A joke. He blinked his eyes open and looked at Dick again.

“Because you didn’t want me anymore.”

Dick’s breath made a whistling sound as he drew it in through his nose and then breathed it out again. Lew expected him to get angry and defensive, as he usually did when Lew suggested he might be partly to blame for something. But he didn’t. In fact, Lew’s accusation seemed to have the opposite effect.

“But that wasn’t true.” Dick’s voice caught in his throat and when he turned to look at Lew again, his eyes were wet. “I always wanted you.”

“Yeah?” Lew stared at the yellow lines in the road as they merged into one in the glare of the headlights. “Is that why we stopped having sex?”

Dick exhaled a breathy, wounded laugh. He downshifted and slowed the car to a stop at the intersection where they would turn left onto the road that would lead them back home. But Dick didn’t turn. Instead, he pulled the car into the ditch and shifted into neutral. Then he looked at Lew, his eyes serious and resolute.

“We stopped having sex because you were drunk all the time. You couldn’t even…” But he didn’t finish the thought, just looked out into the darkness outside the windshield. Lew felt himself crumple, submitting finally to a truth he’d denied for too long. He’d been telling himself that it had been Dick who’d hammered in that final nail, Dick who’d rejected him and closed the door on any intimacy they might have salvaged from the wreckage of his addiction. But that was a lie. In the end, it was all on him.

“Maybe I didn’t want you like that,” Dick said. He let his hands fall from the wheel to rest in his lap. “But I still wanted you.”

Lew nodded, a feeling of futility suddenly washing over him. If only he’d known. If only they’d ever had the courage to say what was in their hearts. If he could just go back to last summer, or last year, or five years ago, or twenty, back to that night when he was sixteen and that boy who lived up the block from them, what was his name? That boy, the college freshman now, home for Christmas with a new understanding of the world and all of its pleasures, even more handsome now for the loss of his innocence, who took Lew to that party, whose house was that? Who brought him home again and didn’t even stay to make sure he’d gotten safely inside. A few hours later, the housekeeper had arrived for work to find him sleeping on the loveseat on the veranda. She shuffled him quietly up to his bedroom without waking his parents.

But he couldn’t go back. They could only keep moving forward, doing the best they could not to repeat the same mistakes.

“Lew.”

He saw Dick’s hand slide across the seat toward him, coming to rest next to his left thigh, close but not touching. He looked up into Dick’s face again, and Dick gave him an apologetic little smile.

“I miss you,” he said simply, and he didn’t need to say any more for Lew to understand exactly what he meant. He wanted to apologize, to try to explain why, even though he’d been home for more than a month now, they still hadn’t had sex. He supposed that, technically, you could describe what they did together as sex. But no matter how passionately things started out, eventually they’d run up against the same old wall. Dick would be touching him, or using his mouth, and Lew would feel himself begin to go soft, and by then it would be too late to start over or try something else. By then, the only way he could finish was if he did it himself.

He wanted to explain all of this, but he scarcely understood it himself. He didn’t know what was wrong with him or how to make it better. So he just laid his palm over the back of Dick’s hand, rubbing his thumb over the knuckle of Dick’s pinkie finger.

“I miss you too.”

They didn’t say anything after that. Eventually, Dick slid his hand out from under Lew’s and shifted the car into first again, guiding them back onto the road, back home. Just before going upstairs to bed, Lew was standing at the kitchen sink drinking a glass of water. As he filled his empty glass again, he felt Dick’s arms wrap around his waist, Dick’s chest against his back. Dick’s mouth brushing over his skin, raising the little hairs at the back of his neck.

“Is this alright?” Dick asked in a soft murmur.

“Yes.”

Lew closed his eyes and leaned back into the circle of Dick’s arms, letting his head fall against his shoulder. Dick kissed his neck, the space behind his earlobe.

“Can we try again?” Dick’s voice had gone low and ragged now. Lew felt the heat of his erection pressed to the curve of his left buttock.

He nodded. He reached up to hang his arm around Dick’s neck, tangling his fingers in his hair. Dick spread his hands wide and dragged his palms over Lew’s ribs, his torso, sliding one hand down to cup Lew’s cock through his pants. He squeezed, and Lew felt the flame of his desire grow stronger as his body responded to Dick’s touch.

He turned around. Dick took a step forward to bring their bodies close together, backing Lew up against the sink. They kissed, wet and deep, as their hips began to rock against each other’s hardness. Lew felt the heat rising, felt his heart beating faster, and then the familiar dread began to creep in again, sending a chill through his whole body. He broke away, turning his head to look down at the rug.

Dick took a step back. “We don’t have to.” He tried to sound patient and understanding, but Lew heard the traces of sorrow underneath it.

But they did have to. They couldn’t keep putting it off forever, running from all the fears he didn’t want to name, didn’t want to look at straight on, as though simply ignoring them would make them leave him alone. But they never would. He saw in that moment, as he looked into the concerned and steadfast face of the one who loved him most, that he would never be free, not until he acknowledged these fears, lined them up like empty bottles on a shelf.

“I want to,” he said shakily. “It’s just -”

“What?”

Lew felt his mind begin to drift, his body to separate from itself the way he used to sometimes during sex, going somewhere else, some place where he never had to admit to Dick or to himself how scared he was. But he forced himself to come back, to stay here with Dick. Here. Now. He took a breath.

“I’ve never done this sober.”

Dick blinked. “What? Sex?”

Lew nodded.

“Never?”

“Never.”

Dick didn’t say anything at first, just looked back at him in disbelief, trying to make sense of it. After a moment, his face softened and the confusion in his eyes cleared.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yeah.” Lew nodded and leaned back against the sink, gripping the counter ledge behind him.

Dick took a step closer and placed his hands lightly on Lew’s hips again. “Me too.”

Lew looked up at him. “You are?”

Dick nodded, smiling weakly. “If you think about it, it’s sort of like our first time again.” He slid his hands around Lew’s waist to his back, folding Lew in his arms again. “Do you remember that?”

Lew breathed a quiet laugh and draped his arms around Dick’s shoulders. “Vaguely. I remember how you hoarded pro-kits for weeks.”

“I didn’t know how much jelly we’d need.”

“Well you brought enough to fuck a whole platoon.”

Dick closed his eyes, scrunching his brow in embarrassment. He tipped his head forward until his forehead came to rest against Lew’s.

“We were nervous then too,” Dick said. “But it worked out alright.”

“I know.” Worry began to seep into Lew’s voice again. “But this is - “ he stammered. “I mean, what if -”

“What?”

They were all lined up in a row, each one of those annoying little fears that had needled their way between him and Dick and stuck in their sides like burrs. _What if I can’t get hard. What if it hurts. What if I don’t like it. What if I’m bad at it._ Dick seemed to know what he was thinking and he smiled understandingly, lifting one hand to cup Lew’s jaw.

“We can stop whenever you want. Just say the word.”

Lew nodded, and Dick nodded back, and then they kissed again. A moment later, he was following Dick through the kitchen and up the stairs, down the narrow hallway to their bedroom.

There were moments during it when he caught himself floating away again, and then Dick would look into his eyes or take his hand and he’d come back to himself. And gradually, with Dick’s help, he began to let it all go, let go of anything that wasn’t part of his body and its fascinating response to the things Dick was doing to it, and just let himself feel it. Dick’s skin against his, like remembering a dream he had every night but forgot by the morning, innately familiar but surprising too. The way Dick touched him, the way he moved inside of him, how Lew felt his hips rising to receive him, as though guided by some primordial instinct, rocking in obscene arcs to pull him in closer, deeper. And when finally he came, sweating and bucking up into Dick’s fist as Dick fucked him, he lost himself entirely for a few blissful seconds and he became part of something else and Dick was part of it too and they were one thing together and that one thing was beautiful.

Afterwards, as they lay facing each other, talking in soft voices about what they wanted to plant in the garden once the danger of frost had passed, Dick told him he was proud of him for how he’d handled things with Mitch and Arthur, that it made him proud to be his husband.

If he were still drinking, Lew would have pretended he hadn’t heard, or brushed it off with a bitter laugh, mumbling something about setting the bar low. Instead, he looked right into Dick’s eyes and said “thank you.” It occurred to him that maybe he was proud of himself too. That he had good reason to be. He’d come a long way since that tumble down the stairs, had fought and clawed and scrabbled his way back to standing on his own two feet again. It was still a far cry from the radical self-acceptance they preached in the program, but he was getting closer. Every day with Dick, every day that he didn’t drink, brought him just a little bit closer. 

“Can’t believe you’re through Step Nine already,” Dick said drowsily. “You’re gonna have to slow down so I can catch up.” 

“Not quite,” Lew said. “I’ve still got one name left on my list.” 

Dick hummed and closed his eyes. “Saving the best for last?” 

Lew smiled vaguely. “Something like that.” 

“Well who is it?” Dick asked, and Lew couldn’t tell if he was just humoring him or if he really didn’t know. He waited for Dick to open his eyes again. After another quiet moment he did, and they were like pale silver, like the faint blue-grey of the sky just before dawn. He laid his palm on Dick's cheek.

“It’s you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amends. Lew finds what he's been looking for. They make a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit spoiler-y but if you've struggled with infertility or pregnancy loss, there's a bit at the end that might be a trigger for you.

Dick got up early for church the next morning, the same as every Sunday. He polished his good shoes and ironed his shirt and put on his brown wool suit, just as he always did. He ate the same solitary breakfast of corn flakes and coffee, listening to the clinking of his spoon against the bowl echo through the cathedral silence of the kitchen. When it was time to go, he slipped quietly out the back door, careful not to wake Lew, even though, as he knew well by now, nothing short of nuclear war could penetrate the catatonic depth of Lew’s Sunday morning sleep. 

It was a typical Sunday in nearly every way, except one. This week, the funereal gloom that usually hung over his heart like a cloud as he drove the ten miles to church had been driven out by the brilliant fingers of dawn breaking over the hilltops. In place of the heavy burden of futility that usually sunk in as he contemplated repeating the same old tired prayers, wondering if God were even listening anymore, Dick felt a lightness of spirit, a renewal of faith, and these feelings converged deep inside of him to take the physical form of a warm, thrumming tingle between the legs of his carefully pressed trousers. Instead of turning over all of the ways in which he and Lew had wronged each other that week, the only thing on Dick’s mind as he drove to church was getting back home so they could screw again. 

When the pastor began the service with the usual “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it”, Dick thought to himself, _Hell, yes!_ During the communion hymn, he felt the words come alive inside of him and pour out on his voice, _“This is the feast of victory for our God”_ , VICTORY, alleluiah, that was exactly what it felt like. They’d conquered something together, he and Lew, and it was right to celebrate that, to join in the hymn of all creation. He thought of how peaceful Lew had looked as he’d gotten dressed, almost childlike, lying face down and hugging the pillow to his chest, one bare leg outside of the covers. As Dick had bent down to pull the blankets back over him, he thought that this was one of those moments he wanted to preserve forever, the sight of Lew deep in untroubled sleep, his lips slightly parted, the soft wisps of his thick lashes splayed across the creamy half-circles under his eyes. He didn’t wake, didn’t even move, when Dick gave his butt a couple light slaps, murmured “see you later, honey”, and left. 

And now he carried that memory with him as he stood and was seated and praised His name, feeling the face of the Lord shining on him and Lew and the bed they shared, the love they’d made, the long road they’d walked back into each other’s arms. It was a rich blessing indeed, but it didn’t flow from God alone. They’d each taken on their share of the blame and guilt; they deserved a little of the glory too. 

So Dick rejoiced and was glad, and this joy carried him like a wave through the Gospel reading and the sermon and the blood of Christ, shed for him. It wasn’t until the Confession that the glow began to fade, and as Dick listened to the pastor recite the liturgy, a different scene from the night before cropped up, pushing its shoulders through the rich soil of Dick’s memory until he could no longer ignore it. 

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” the pastor said, and Dick felt his cheeks flush hot with shame as he repeated the words he’d said so many times they were etched on his heart. “But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us,” he mumbled, along with the congregation, “and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

He really was proud of the way Lew had so humbly confessed his own sins, the strength and dignity he’d shown in making amends for something that was, for both of them, still a source of such poignant shame and embarrassment. Dick had known that his was the last name on Lew’s list and had been awaiting the conversation with a vague sense of dread. He knew it was a necessary part of Lew’s recovery, and of his too, but part of him wanted to just avoid it altogether, the way they’d skirted so many uncomfortable conversations in the past. Saying so much by saying nothing at all. 

When he’d begun to make his own list, he’d done as the Al-Anon literature had suggested and divided the names into three columns. One list of people he was willing to make amends to, one he _might_ be willing to, and a third list of people to whom he felt he could not. There were many names in the first column, none in the second, and only one in the third. It was Lew’s. 

Despite his best efforts to “detach with love”, as the pamphlet urged, he still couldn’t let go of the hurt and anger, the sense of injustice that raged inside of him at the notion that he must answer for the crimes of another man. The stubborn conviction that it just wasn’t fair. He was still putting everything on Lew, conveniently ignoring the part he’d played because it threatened his preferred role as innocent victim. But he wasn’t innocent. He’d sinned against Lew in thought, word, and deed. Those mornings in the shower, all those nights he’d turned away from him, moved out of reach of Lew’s hand stretched across the valley between them. All that he’d done and left undone. Standing there with his head bowed and the morning light streaming down on him through the stained glass windows, Dick realized, finally, what he had to do.

When he got home, he found Lew sitting at the kitchen table in his robe and pajamas, smoking a cigarette and squinting at the newspaper. 

“When are you going to admit you need glasses?” 

Lew looked up only briefly before going back to the paper. “As soon as you admit you need knee surgery.” 

“I don’t need -” Dick replied automatically, stopping himself when he realized how good it felt, how normal, to tease each other like this, the way they used to. He hung his coat on the hook by the door and walked to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee. 

Lew sat close to the window, which was open wide enough for him to rest the hand holding the cigarette on the sill, and every time he took a puff he’d lean over and blow the smoke out the screen. He was smoking more these days, which Dick didn’t love, but he wasn’t about to make an issue of it. If a few more cigarettes offered Lew a little comfort in his daily battle to stay sober, Dick figured it was a small price to pay. He set his cup on the table and took his seat across from Lew. 

“How’d you sleep?” 

Lew took one more long drag, keeping one eye on Dick as he blew the smoke out the window. One half of his mouth rose in a coy smirk as he crushed the cigarette in the ashtray on the sill. “No complaints. You?” 

“Yeah.” Dick laughed softly and peered down into his coffee. “Pretty good.” 

Under the table, he felt the sole of Lew’s bare foot pressed against his knee. He dropped his hand to his lap and wrapped his fingers around Lew’s toes.

“You’re cold.” He pulled Lew’s foot a little higher on his thigh, rubbing vigorously to warm him up. Lew leaned back in his chair. 

“How was church?”

Dick shrugged. “Nice. It was Pentecost.” 

Lew dropped his foot away and stuffed it back into his slipper, and then Dick felt the other foot pressed to his opposite knee. “What’s that?”

Lew’s other foot was even colder than the first had been. “It’s when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles.” Dick covered the top of Lew’s foot with his hand and began rubbing it, feeling his palm grow warm from the friction. 

“Is that when they all started speaking in tongues?” 

“Yeah,” Dick said. “That’s the one.” 

Lew hummed, his lips fluttering in a playful smile. “How about you?”

“How about me what?” Dick moved his hand a little higher to hold Lew’s ankle. 

“Did the fire of the Spirit move within you?” 

Dick laughed. “I can’t say that it did.” He gazed into Lew’s eyes across the table and his smile faded. “There was something, though.” 

Lew blinked and cocked his head to the side in concern. “What?” But Dick didn’t answer right away, just quietly sipped his coffee and sat up straighter in his chair. Lew let his foot fall to the floor and leaned forward. “Tell me.” 

Dick took another sip of coffee. He smiled weakly and then began to explain to Lew the sense of awakening he’d felt as he’d invited the spirit of transformation to come into him, the peace that had washed over him when he’d understood, finally, that he could not free himself from the bondage of this sin until he found the courage to make his amends and ask for Lew’s forgiveness. 

“What do you think?” He asked Lew when he was done. 

Lew crossed his arms, leaning his elbows on the table. He took a long, patient breath and looked into Dick’s eyes. 

“Doesn’t matter what I think. If that’s what you need, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Dick felt relief blow through his body like a mighty wind. “Maybe we could do it together. Make a night of it.” 

“Oh god.” Lew chuckled and lifted his cup to his lips, smiling at Dick across the rim. “If that’s what passes for romance these days.”

“Come on,” Dick said. “We might as well. If we both need to anyway.” 

“Alright,” Lew said, nodding. “How about after my meeting on Tuesday.” 

Dick smiled. “It’s a date.” 

They didn’t know it then, but they wouldn’t get the chance. By Tuesday night, they’d have bigger things to worry about.

* * *

The traffic light changed from yellow to red. Lew slowed the car to a stop and stared at the jagged streaks the raindrops made as they hit the windshield. He could see a bright neon glow winking in his periphery but he refused to turn his head and look. He knew that neon sign, and the one across the street from it, and the four others he’d have to pass by on his way out of town. Sometimes he could observe them with a sort of detached curiosity, like those pictures of archaeological sites in National Geographic. But tonight he knew it would be best if he didn’t even look at them, so he stared straight ahead and willed the light to change. 

When it finally did, he decided to turn left and get off of the main road altogether. He switched on his turn signal and the car behind him honked its horn as he waited for a break in the oncoming traffic. Let the bastard honk, he thought. Let him curse and flip him off and call his mother names. He had to get off of that road. Driving slowly down one side street after another, Lew glanced here and there into broad picture windows and felt somewhat calmed by the domestic patterns of life he glimpsed within. It was supper time for most of them, or just after. He imagined steam rising from kitchen sinks and tired men settling into their favorite chairs with a finger of scotch or a bottle of beer, men who had worked all day just to get to this moment. The best part of their day, and the only thing, if they were being honest with themselves, that they really enjoyed anymore. Lew pitied them, but he envied them a little too. 

He drove the rest of the way home in a quiet rage. He tried repeating the slogans but they sounded so trite and hackneyed in the context of the grievous indignity he’d just suffered and he only wound up making himself angrier. _Easy Does It_ , he thought, and then pictured the red, seething face of Bob G. as he’d accused Lew of deliberately sabotaging everyone’s recovery. _Progress Not Perfection_ was a favorite of Denny H., who’d already had two relapses in the six weeks Lew had been attending the Tuesday night meetings, and yet still had the gall to stand up and sanctimoniously proclaim that people like Lewis N. could never be cured. But the worst was _We’re Only As Sick As Our Secrets_ , which testified either to the program’s woeful ignorance of the vagaries of human experience or to its cruel sense of irony. In any case, Dick had been right. Lew shouldn’t have told them a goddamn thing. 

The rain was coming down harder by the time he got home but he didn’t even try to cover himself as he walked the fifteen yards from the garage to the back door. The storm made the kitchen feel even cozier and that made it harder, somehow. Dick standing at the stove flipping grilled cheese sandwiches on the griddle while Tennessee Ernie Ford crooned about owing his soul to the company store and Teddy lurching herself out of a lazy sprawl to greet him at the door. The soft yellow light against the green gingham valance and the steam rising from the pot of tomato soup; the table set for two, the towel draped over Dick’s shoulder. Everything so damn cozy and serene, while outside, the storm clamored and bellowed like God’s orchestra. 

Dick looked up briefly from the stove to smile at him. “How’d it go?”

But Lew didn’t answer, pretending to be absorbed in the task of taking off his wet coat and shoes. 

“Honey?” Dick looked up again, chuckling in sweet concern when he saw the state Lew was in. “Good lord, you’re soaked.” He walked across the kitchen to get a closer look. Lew just stood there on the rug, water dripping from the ends of his hair. Dick took the towel from his shoulder and tried to lay it over Lew’s head, but he ducked away. 

“It’s fine.”

“But you’re all wet. You’ll catch a cold like that.” 

“I said I’m fine,” Lew snapped. The affectionate warmth in Dick’s face changed suddenly to caution.

“What’s wrong?”

Lew’s shoulders sagged. Dick took a step back. “Lew?” 

He could practically feel the panic surging through Dick, the racing of his heart, the cold dread creeping in like a cancer. Lew recognized immediately the fear he saw in Dick’s eyes. This was what Dick looked like when he thought Lew was drinking again. 

Lew gazed down at the dark, wet stains on the rug, his head still bowed in disgrace. After another moment, he looked up, raising and then dropping his shoulders again in a feeble shrug. 

“They kicked me out.” 

“What?” 

The anger and alarm in Dick’s voice took Lew by surprise and he smiled faintly at the offense Dick seemed to feel on his behalf. He supposed it was romantic, in a twisted sort of way. And then the feeling passed and his own anger, which had taken a backseat for a little while to the shame of having to tell Dick what had happened, flared back up even stronger than before.

“Why?” Dick demanded. 

Lew dropped his head to the side. “Why do you think, Dick?”

Dick’s mouth fell open but he didn’t say anything. He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. 

“Me,” he said simply. “You told them about us.” 

Lew nodded. 

“But how can they - “ Dick sputtered. “They can’t just - ” He shook his head, bewildered, talking more to himself than to Lew. “It’s not fair,” he said with finality, as though his authority on the subject were absolute. “You’ve got just as much right to be there as anyone else.” 

Lew heaved a deep, weary sigh. “Yeah, well. That’s not the way they see it.” 

“What are you going to do?” The anger in Dick’s eyes had faded back to worry. 

“I don’t know,” Lew said, his voice hollow. “Put on dry clothes. Take a shower.” 

“I mean about this.”

Lew hadn’t thought about it yet. He knew that eventually he would have to find another group, take his place in another community, but it all just seemed so pointless. When he contemplated the tapestry of half-truths and evasions he’d have to weave all over again, the feminine pronouns, hiding behind a made-up name for a made-up wife, he had that old suspicion again, the one that had haunted him all through treatment. The program couldn’t work for him. It wasn’t meant to. He’d be better off going it alone. 

“I’ll figure it out,” he muttered tiredly. 

“We should call Bradley,” Dick said. His voice had taken on a breathless urgency that picked up speed the longer he talked. “He knows people in the organization, right? Maybe he could put us in touch with someone -”

“Honey.” 

But Dick didn’t seem to hear him. He began twisting the dish towel into a hard little rope. “I think they’d like to know that their chapters are discriminating against members in good standing, just for -”

“Dick. Stop.” 

Dick paused for a moment and pursed his lips in frustration. Then he picked up a different thread.

“We’ll find you a new group,” he insisted. “I’ll check _The Grapevine_ after supper. Liberty must have one. If not there, then Jeffersonville.”

Lew grabbed for the dish towel and snatched it out of Dick’s hands. “For Christ’s sake! Can you hear yourself?”

Dick stared at him in stunned silence. 

“You’re doing it again,” Lew said. “You’re trying to fix everything.” 

“I’m not -” Dick stopped abruptly, as though he could stifle his impulse toward denial if he just didn’t give it any air to breathe. But it was too late. 

“Yes you are,” Lew said. “You’re trying to make everything better so I don’t have a reason to drink.” 

Dick looked down at his feet and hugged his arms to his chest. He nodded slowly, like he was willing to concede Lew’s point, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. After a few moments, he looked up at Lew. 

“It’s not right,” he said weakly. “I’ll bet you’ve worked as hard as any of them, harder even. For them to kick you out just because this one thing makes them uncomfortable, that’s -” He blinked, shook his head. “That’s bullshit.” 

Lew shrugged. “That’s life. Nothing we can do about it.” 

“Well, I hate that,” Dick said in a priggish, haughty voice.

Lew smiled faintly at him. “I know you do, babe.” They stood there just looking at each other for a moment, and then Lew caught a whiff of something sharp and acrid in the air and he wrinkled his nose.

“I think supper might be burning.” He sniffed again. “There _is_ something we can do about that.” 

“Damn it,” Dick cursed to himself as he rushed to the stove and turned off the burners. He swore again as he lifted the blackened sandwiches off of the griddle with a spatula and dropped them in the garbage. He began making two more sandwiches and Lew went upstairs to change his clothes. 

When he came back down to the kitchen again, he noticed that Dick had set the table with place mats and real cloth napkins instead of the flimsy paper ones they normally used, and he remembered what was supposed to have been special about this night, before everything had been turned inside out by that disaster of a meeting. Making amends would be yet another thing they’d have to set aside for another day, and he was surprised to realize how profoundly this disappointed him. He hadn’t been looking forward to it, exactly, but neither had he dreaded it. He imagined making amends to Dick would be sort of like going to a funeral. He knew it would be hard, but that there’d be no healing or moving on without it. But that didn’t matter tonight. Tonight, he just didn’t have it in him. 

Over supper, they talked of small things, seed hybrids and fertilizer blends, engines that needed tune-ups and tires that needed patching. The list of spring chores seemed infinite and it was nice to lose themselves for a little while in the relentless march of the season. To forget for a little while the cloud of uncertainty that hung over them still, as each day they just did the best they could to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes they couldn’t see their way through it to know which way to step, couldn’t even see each other. But when he closed his eyes and really concentrated, Lew could feel Dick next to him. He knew he was there, stumbling along beside him, shouting to him through the fog. Dick was the flash and the thunder. 

Later, as they stood side by side at the sink washing up, Lew handed Dick a soup bowl to dry but didn’t let go when he tried to take it from him. Dick’s searching eyes followed a line from the bowl in Lew’s hand up his arm and into his face. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Lew said. “I’ll find a new group. I’ll be fine.” 

Dick smiled sadly at him. “But won’t the same thing happen there?” 

Lew tipped his head to the side. “Not if I don’t tell them.” 

A pathetic little whimper of sympathy rumbled up from Dick’s chest and he dropped his forehead to Lew’s shoulder. Lew shook the water off of his hands and hooked his arms around Dick’s neck. 

“I’ll be okay,” he said again, murmuring softly into Dick’s hair. “Everything’ll be okay.” 

They couldn’t walk this road for each other, but they could walk it together. They didn’t have to do any of it alone.

* * *

A few days later, Lew was on his knees clearing the dead leaves from the rose beds. He should have been wearing gloves, but he’d left them in the barn and didn’t feel like walking that far to get them. Though he tried to be careful, his impatience to have the job done made him overzealous, and he kept pricking himself on the hard, dry thorns, swearing in surprise every time. He’d just done it again and was sitting back on his heels sucking at his bloodied index finger when Dick came bouncing up the driveway in the truck. He stepped out of the cab, holding the door open for Teddy to hop down onto the gravel. She trotted across the lawn to Lew with her tail wagging, Dick following a few steps behind. 

“It’s looking better already,” Dick said, grinning happily as he nodded at the pile of dead leaves in the grass. He was carrying a little cardboard tub with the bright blue Brothers Inn logo and holding a brown paper envelope under his arm. When he reached Lew, he laid his free hand on his shoulder and leaned down to kiss him. 

“You find five dollars in your pocket or something?” 

Dick quirked his brow in confusion. 

“You’re in such a good mood.”

But Dick only laughed softly and smiled again. “Come on.” He patted Lew’s shoulder and nodded toward the house. “I’ve got a present for you.”

“Is it nightcrawlers?” 

Dick rolled his eyes, but his smile didn’t fade. “Come on,” he said again, and began walking to the house. 

Inside, Dick dropped the mysterious envelope on the table and put the nightcrawlers in the fridge while Lew washed his hands in the powder room between the kitchen and the mudroom. Usually when Dick gave him a gift he prefaced it with “it’s okay if you don’t like it” or “you can take it back, I won’t be offended”. But now he wore the same cocky, sanguine grin Lew remembered from that bumpy jeep ride to Goehring’s house. He dried his hands and took his usual spot next to the window at the table. 

Dick was leaning against the doorframe that led to the front of the house, his arms folded across his chest. He nodded at the package. “Open it.” 

Lew picked up the envelope and unwound the figure-eights of string from the buttons holding the flap closed. He looked inside, glancing up at Dick in genuine wonder before spreading the envelope’s contents across the table. 

“I thought they got shut down,” he said, quietly astonished as his eyes drifted over the magazines before him. 

“They just can’t send out subscriptions,” Dick said. “They’re still printing it.” 

Lew opened the magazine closest to him and scanned its table of contents. _ONE: The Homosexual Viewpoint_ read the masthead. He and Dick had been loyal subscribers ever since they’d heard about the magazine through Mitch and Arthur a few years ago, but they’d stopped getting it after the Post Office had decided the publication violated obscenity laws and refused to deliver it. Dick had tacked up one of its covers to the inside of their closet door, a mod line-drawing illustration of a slender man looking off into the distance, his thumb hooked casually under the waistband of his jeans, next to the words _“I am glad I am homosexual”._ It had been there so long Lew had stopped seeing it. 

“How’d they get these?” he asked as he reverently turned the pages.

“Friends in L.A.”

“We need some of those.” 

“I think Compton’s still out there.” 

Lew could practically hear Dick smirking. He laughed. “Yeah. Let’s ask Buck Compton,” he said, pronouncing his name with manly gravitas. 

Dick gave a little lift of his chin. “Turn to the classifieds.” 

Lew flipped to the back pages and glanced over the ads for men’s clothing and hygiene products, the scattered calls for artistic submissions and pen pals. “What am I looking for?” 

Dick walked to the table and leaned over him. “Before I show you, I just want you to know that I didn’t go looking for this. I’m not trying to fix anything.” 

Lew looked up at him, utterly bewildered. “Okay,” he said tentatively, and breathed an awkward laugh. “You’re starting to worry me.” 

Dick gave him a brief, uncertain smile and pointed to one of the little rectangular boxes. Lew looked down at the page. 

_“HOMOSEXUAL?”_ He read aloud. _“ALCOHOLIC?”_ At that point, his voice fell to a solemn murmur. _“There’s a place for you.”_ Underneath the text were listed three phone numbers, one for San Francisco, one for Boston, and the last for New York. Lew looked back up at Dick. 

“Is this what I think it is?” 

Dick smiled again, more buoyantly this time, and Lew felt his heart rise a little, picked up by this sudden gust of unlikely hope. Dick reached for the telephone and held the receiver out to Lew. 

“Only one way to find out.”

* * *

Dick stared at his own reflection in the window. He looked older than his thirty-seven years, his skin sallow and pale in the washed-out glow from the narrow strips of fluorescent lights lining the ceiling of the coach. Next to him, Lew was engrossed in his copy of the Big Book, which he’d brought along to the meeting. The binding was cracked with use, the pages rumpled and grimy with fingerprints. He must have been through it a hundred times by now; Dick couldn’t imagine what more he could possibly learn. The lights flickered and everything went quiet for a moment and then the train screeched and hissed and lurched forward. 

The platform passed by in a blur, and then the car plunged into the darkness of the bowels of Grand Central Terminal. Lew reached up to turn on his overhead light. Dick looked at the reflection in the window again, gazing this time at Lew’s profile. With his hair falling forward over his brow and his lips moving faintly as he read, he seemed to possess the intense focus of a scholar poring over some ancient manuscript, the single-minded devotion of a monk chanting lines of sacred text. He looked away from the shadow Lew in the window to address the real one sitting beside him. 

“Is there going to be a test?” 

Lew began to turn his head slowly toward Dick, his eyes the last to tear away from the page. 

“Hmm?” 

“You’re studying that thing like it’s a German anti-aircraft map.”

Lew smiled self-consciously and leaned toward Dick, close enough for their shoulders to touch. “I heard a story tonight about the Third Tradition. Apparently the whole reason it’s in there is because of some infighting over whether to let queers -” 

They were interrupted by a rush of air through the compartment door as the conductor stepped onto the coach and began inspecting tickets. Dick sat up straighter and reached into his pocket for theirs, handing the two thin strips of paper across the seat. The conductor didn’t even look at them as he quickly punched two holes in the tickets and slid them under the clip behind the headrest of Lew’s seat. They waited for him to finish with the rest of the passengers before settling back against each other again. 

Dick followed Lew’s index finger as he flipped the pages, tracing over the lines of words. “Here it is,” he said finally, tapping the page. Dick leaned closer, squinting to make out the words in the low light. 

“ _‘Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism’,”_ Dick read. “ _‘Hence, we may refuse none who wish to recover’.”_ He huffed a cynical laugh. “Those guys in your old group must have been sick that day.” 

Lew hummed. “Maybe,” he mumbled, but it was clear that whatever bitterness or resentment he might have still clung to after being banished from his home group, he’d let go of it now. He held the book closer to his face and read the rest of the paragraph. “ _‘Any two or three alcoholics gathered together may call themselves an A.A. group’.”_

Lew laid the book in his lap and relaxed against the high-backed seat, turning his shoulders slightly toward Dick. “So the story is that this guy showed up to a meeting and told them he was a queer and asked them if they’d still let him join. This was real early on, way the hell back in forty-seven or something. And I guess the leadership was all up in arms about it. They put it to a vote and everything. But in the end, Bill convinced them that they couldn’t turn anyone away. And that’s why we have the Third Tradition.” 

A proud smile began to stretch slowly across Dick’s face. “You really had a good time tonight, huh?” 

“Yeah.” Lew smiled serenely back at him. “I guess I did. It was good to… “ he trailed off. “I mean, the company was… You know?”

Dick nodded. “I know.” 

He’d felt the same elusive sense of belonging himself, even before he walked into his first ever Al-Anon meeting in a dusky corner of a Greenwich Village coffee shop, trading horror stories and offering the sort of deep and unqualified support that only comes from knowing the anger and shame and heartbreak of loving an alcoholic. It had begun as they’d made their protracted way into Manhattan, this feeling of being seen and heard, in a way he’d never been before, and it had only grown stronger as they’d hopped trains and walked countless city blocks until finally arriving at the Methodist church on Seventh Avenue where the group met on Saturday nights. “The Red Door Group” they called themselves, which sounded so exciting and clandestine, until Dick saw the actual red door through which they were to enter and wait for someone named Hank. 

Lew had to use the bathroom and so Dick stood there in the vestibule by himself for a moment, looking into the darkened sanctuary and nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He coughed, and the sound echoed off the shiny linoleum floors. A moment later he heard brusque footsteps growing ever louder, and then a shadow clouded his periphery.

“Oh god, you look like a little lost lamb,” the man said, striding toward Dick with purpose. He was a little shorter than Dick, and a little older, with thinning grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “So sorry I wasn’t here to meet you. I’m Hank.” He held out his hand. 

“Dick.” As they shook hands, Lew stepped through the swinging door of the men’s room. 

“You must be our new friends from upstate.” 

“That’s us,” Lew said. “I’m the one who called. I’m Lewis.” 

“We’re so glad to have you.” Hank shook Lew’s hand vigorously, glancing back and forth between them a few times. “So who’s the drunk and who’s the boyfriend?” Hank dropped Lew’s hand. “Or are you both drunks?” 

Lew’s eyes met Dick’s briefly and then he raised his index finger. “I’m the drunk.” 

“Terrific,” Hank said without irony. He looked back at Dick. “Alright if I steal him for an hour or so? I promise you’ll get him back in one piece.” 

Dick tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket and stifled a grin at the expression of amused terror flashing in Lew’s eyes. “I suppose that’s alright,” he said. 

“The boyfriends meet at the coffee shop on the corner. It’s the one with the tea kettle on the -”

“Yeah, I know the place,” Dick said. “We passed it on our way here.” 

“Ask for Spencer. You tell him you’re new and that I said to take good care of you.” Hank arched his brow as though to emphasize his sincerity. 

“Spencer,” Dick said, nodding. “Got it.” 

He wasn’t sure how to take his leave, if he should kiss Lew or pat him on the back or just what, so he simply nodded at him and Lew nodded back, flashing Dick a guarded smile before following Hank out of the vestibule, toward the lighted hallway on the far side of the sanctuary. Dick waited a moment, listening to the echo of their footsteps slowly recede until he couldn’t hear them anymore. Then he walked back out the red door, into the mild May night. 

“You tired?” 

Lew’s voice jarred Dick out of the haze that had settled upon him in the darkness of the train. He blinked his eyes into focus and looked out at the lights of the city winking across the rippled surface of the Hudson. He turned his head toward Lew. 

“A little,” he admitted. “You?” 

“Wide awake,” Lew said. “Feel like I could run a marathon.” 

Dick began to laugh, but the sound was quickly swallowed by a deep yawn. 

“Come on.” Lew patted his shoulder. “It’s a long trip. Get some sleep.” 

Dick took a quick scan of the coach. One man a few rows ahead was reading a newspaper. The rest of the passengers all seemed to have fallen asleep several stops ago. He leaned against Lew, tucking his head into the warm place between his neck and shoulder. Lew spread his jacket across their laps. 

“Conductor’s going to think you’re giving me a handjob,” Dick said.

Lew turned his head and brushed his lips against Dick’s forehead. “Won’t he be disappointed.” 

Dick felt his body grow heavy as the gentle rhythm of the train rocked them back and forth, as Lew’s chest rose and fell against his cheek on each breath. A profound stillness descended on them, and Dick was afraid to move or make a sound lest he disturb it, this divine and fragile peace they’d finally found together. That was the main difference he’d been seeing in Lew ever since he’d met him at the red door after the meeting. After living for more than a decade with the constant and pervasive anxiety over where his next drink was coming from, if his stash was safe, whether Dick might find it and pour it down the sink, he’d better just check one more time, an intense and unwavering calm seemed to have settled about Lew, wrapped its arms around him like a blanket. Dick felt Lew’s fingers slide through his under the jacket and he closed his hand tightly around them, vowing never to let go, not even if he fell asleep. 

Just as he was beginning to slip away, Lew tipped his head to rest his cheek against the crown of Dick’s head. “Can we have sex tonight?” he murmured. “When we get home, I mean?” 

Dick chuckled softly. “If I’m still awake, sure.” 

By the time they eventually did get home, they were both too tired to do much more than rut against each other’s hardness, moaning into each other’s mouth and rocking their hips in a mindless rhythm that brought them close to the edge but not over it. Finally Lew reached down into the dark, humid space between them and wrapped his hand around both of them, and something about the combination of his rough palm and his smooth cock sent Dick reeling, spinning like a top, and maybe it was because he was so tired or maybe it was the change that had come over Lew since the meeting, but Dick felt a powerful urge overtake him then. It was a desire to let go and give everything over to Lew, to stretch his legs out wide across the sheets and let his arms hang loose at his sides while Lew touched him and kissed his throat and called him ‘baby’. To let Lew make him come. 

After they’d cleaned up and were lying together under the covers, Dick rolled over to drape his arm across Lew’s stomach and rest his head on Lew’s chest. Lew wrapped his arm around Dick’s shoulders, his other arm bent behind his head. He was quiet for so long that Dick had thought he’d fallen asleep.

“We need to finish Step Nine.” Lew said, breaking the silence with his calm, serious voice. “We can’t keep putting it off.”

Dick lifted his head off of Lew’s chest and looked up at him. 

“We didn’t do it on purpose.”

Lew looked down at him with a face so sad that Dick felt a sudden chill rush through his body. “We never did anything on purpose.” 

Dick dropped his head again and began trailing his fingers up and down through the hair on Lew’s sternum. 

“Okay,” he said softly. “Tomorrow. After church.” 

Lew’s body went stiff and then he wriggled out from under Dick, propped himself up on his elbow. “Let’s do it now.” 

“Now?” Dick turned to his side and rested his cheek in his palm. “It’s after midnight.” 

He saw the muscles of Lew’s jaw tighten. “It’s okay if you’re not ready,” Lew said. “But I have to do mine.” His eyes fell to the rumpled sheets between them. “If I don’t, I can’t…” He trailed off and didn’t say any more. 

“What?” 

With visible effort, Lew pulled his gaze up to meet Dick’s again. “It just feels like hiding, every day I don’t do this.” The faintest hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth and when he spoke again, his voice was dry and husky. “I don’t want to hide anymore.” 

It shot right to the rawest center of his heart, that feeble smile, that husky voice, and Dick reached for Lew’s hand, brought it to his lips and kissed the knobs of his knuckles. He nodded. 

“I’ll make us some tea.”

* * *

Lew lit a cigarette and took a long, bracing puff. He turned his head to blow the smoke out the kitchen window, but the breeze was out of the wrong direction and it blew back into his face, curling up into the hazy glow from the light fixture above the table. Dick scowled and waved his hand in front of his face. 

“Alright, alright,” Lew grumbled, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray on the sill before Dick could say anything. It was an unnatural combination anyway, cigarettes and herbal tea. He wondered briefly why Dick hadn’t made coffee, but when he looked across the table and saw the dark circles beneath his red-rimmed eyes, Lew realized how late it was for him, and that no matter how gracious he’d been about accommodating Lew’s acute need to have this conversation, he was still hoping to get a few hours of sleep tonight. For his own part, Lew knew he wouldn’t rest until he’d made his amends to Dick, once and for all. 

He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out the letter he’d written weeks ago, two sheets torn from a yellow legal pad, folded over on themselves into a tight square. A wrinkle appeared in Dick’s forehead as Lew began to smooth out the pages against the table, and then his expression changed into some tragic combination of encouragement and sympathy, half comfort, half pity. Of the two of them, Lew couldn’t tell who was more uncomfortable. 

“Okay.” He took a sip of tea and wished he’d smoked the rest of that cigarette. “Let’s get this over with.” 

He cleared his throat, coughed, cleared it again. He opened his mouth to speak and looked up from the letter, into Dick’s eyes. “Dear Dick,” he began, the self-mockery in his voice a poor cover for the palpable apprehension causing sweat to bead up on the back of his neck. An awkward smile floated over Dick’s face, and then Lew began reading the letter for real. 

_“Ten years ago this last Christmas, I found myself face to face, for the first time, with the awful possibility that I could lose you. Up until then I’d figured that the two of us had been tapped on the shoulder by some invisible hand of fate and were more or less untouchable. I took it for granted that you’d always be you and I’d always be me, and that we’d always make it through alright, so long as we had each other. But that day outside of Foy, I caught a glimpse of a world without you -”_

Here, Lew’s eyes flashed up from the letter and he suppressed a bashful grin. _“ - and buddy, I wanted no part of it.”_

He heard Dick breathe a quiet laugh, felt his slippered foot knock against his own under the table. It reminded him of the way Dick would sometimes bump the toe of his boot against his ankle, his way of saying _“I can’t give you what I really want to right now, so please accept this kick”_. Was this how they’d always come back, he wondered just then, the memories he’d thought were lost forever, springing on him with such force and immediacy that it felt like he’d been punched in the ribs. He shook the thought away and went back to his letter.

 _“But somewhere between the Bois Jacques and this leafy hamlet, I forgot that part. Pretty soon I’m going to go into a long list of all the terrible things I’ve done, and then wrap it up by getting down on my knees and begging your forgiveness, but before I do, I just want to say that I know they all flow from that one source. That I forgot you.”_ Lew paused for a moment. He could feel the waves of shame beginning to lap at his toes. _“And in forgetting you, I denied us.”_

He looked up again. The wrinkle had come back into Dick’s brow and his gaze was so steady and intense that Lew had a strange feeling Dick was looking right through him, out the window at some trick of the moonlight on the lawn. 

“You sure you want to hear the rest of this?” 

Dick nodded faintly, but didn’t smile. 

“Alright.” Lew took a deep breath, but it did nothing to still the sudden racing of his heart. He held the paper up closer and began reading again in a voice that was clear and loud, if a little shaky. 

_“I’m sorry for lying to you. Every time you asked me whether I’d been drinking, or if I was drunk, or how many I’d had, I was most certainly lying, and you probably didn’t believe me anyway, and I knew this, and I still lied through my teeth._

_I’m sorry for drinking myself into a state of near-uselessness. You’ve had to do the work of two men on top of your other full-time job of taking care of me, and it’s not fair. You didn’t sign up for this and you deserve a hell of a lot better.”_

He felt Dick’s cool hand cover the back of his and he turned his hand over to squeeze Dick’s fingers. 

_“I’m sorry for all the messes you’ve had to clean up. All the things I’ve broken or lost or ruined because I was drunk. I’m sorry about the photo of us and the dents in the car and for making you stitch up my head because I was too ashamed to go to the doctor.”_

Unconsciously, he rubbed his fingers over the scar. An image flashed through his mind, Dick standing over him, inches from his face. A trail of blood, two short, thin lines and then a fat, round drop, bold and thick against the stark whiteness of Dick’s undershirt. It swept over him like a wave, all the shame and guilt and embarrassment of that night, and he knew it was only a fraction of the trouble he’d caused Dick over the years. The whole exercise began to feel rather pointless to him, asking forgiveness for things that suddenly seemed unforgivable. 

_“The thing is, I’ve been putting booze ahead of everything else for a long time.”_ His voice softened a bit, turning reflective and philosophical. _“But when we took up together, I swore to myself that you would always come first. Well, that was just the first in a long line of promises I’ve broken. There’ve been far too many by now to write them all down, but here are just a few, in no particular order:_

_I promised not to get drunk and embarrass you, and I did.  
I promised to quit, and then I promised again, and then again, and again, and I never did.  
I promised to be faithful to you, and I wasn’t.”_

Lew's voice became strained. He tried to swallow, but his throat was so tight that the effort gave him a headache. He carried on anyway, heedless of the tears now stinging his eyes, 

_“I promised to love and cherish you, and I treated you like you mattered less - “_

The paper fell out of his hand and floated down to the table. He covered his eyes with his palm, like he could keep all that dammed up regret from bursting out if he only pressed hard enough. He dragged his hand down his face and forced himself to look into Dick’s eyes. 

“- like you mattered less to me than a two-dollar bottle of whiskey.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when he broke down, silent, breathy sobs wracking his whole body even as he tried to hang onto some shred of control. He pressed the heels of his hands flat against his eyes. 

“It’s alright,” he heard Dick murmur, his voice calm and paternal. He touched Lew’s elbow. “It’s alright.”

Lew shook his head. He groaned in frustration and wiped the tears from his eyes. Once the most violent part of his sudden spell of emotion seemed to have passed, he looked down at the letter, but when he tried to read the next line, his breath hitched in his throat. He looked at Dick through the blur of tears and held up one finger. 

“I need a minute.” 

“Lew.” 

But he was up and crossing the five steps to the powder room before Dick could stop him. He closed the door and turned on the tap. Splashing cold water on his face had a calming effect and he wished they had a bathtub down here because he’d fill it up with the coldest, clearest water he could get and lay down in it, maybe not even bothering to take his pajamas off first. Instead, he put the rubber plug in the drain and filled the sink, dunking his head into it and feeling his lungs contract at the shock of the cold water running down his neck. 

When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he stood up straight and the water ran in tiny streams down his face and back and shoulders, creeping under the collar of his pajamas to trickle down his bare chest. He heard a knock at the door. 

“You alright?”

Lew grabbed the hand towel from the rack and studied his face in the mirror. He looked like a drowned rat. 

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you come out?” 

Why didn’t he? Lew couldn’t answer that. He rubbed the towel over his face and thought about how many times he’d read that letter, saying every terrible word out loud, and they’d never had that effect on him. That had been the point of practicing, so he could achieve a certain detachment from the unbearable litany of injury and betrayal. Because if he really thought about how much pain and regret it caused him, knowing how much he’d hurt Dick, and how he hated himself for it, how could he sit there across the table from him, calmly sipping his tea? How could he live with himself? 

He heard the floor creak as Dick walked back across the kitchen, then his footsteps going up the stairs. He thought maybe Dick had given up and gone to bed, but then he heard the footsteps again, quicker this time, and then the rustle of paper, and then Dick clearing his throat. 

“Dear Lew.” Dick’s voice was muffled somewhat by the door, but Lew could still hear him plainly. 

_“You were drunk the first time I kissed you. You probably don’t remember that. I don’t think I would have had the courage to do it if you hadn’t been. You were also drunk the night I admitted to myself that I was in love with you. You probably don’t remember that either. But I do. We had sex in a quonset hut and then I helped you back to your tent. You were still on your feet, but just barely.”_

In spite of everything, Lew couldn’t help but smile. He draped the towel around his neck and stepped closer to the door, resting his head against the jamb.

_“I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though I disapproved in theory, and even though I knew that it would only cause you grief, your drinking was always a part of your charm. When I fell in love with you, I fell in love with everything about you, and when you told me you’d hidden those bottles in my footlocker, I was so proud I thought I might bust. I knew I should be concerned, but I wasn’t, because I was your guy and you were my Nix, and even though we were cold and dirty and hungry and the bullets were flying all around us, I just knew that life didn’t get much better than that. I don’t suppose it’ll come as any surprise that my happiest memory from that time is watching you get drunk on all that fine liquor I’d locked away and kept safe, all for you.”_

Dick paused. Lew heard the paper flutter as he turned the letter over. When he spoke again, the nostalgic affection had faded away, replaced by something sadder. 

_“I don’t mean to say that it’s my fault. But I know that I’m not blameless either. I watched you get worse and I did nothing, because I didn’t want to believe that my husband was an alcoholic. Or I tried to hide all the evidence of how bad things had gotten, like I could just sweep it all away if I made sure no one ever saw all the empty bottles in our trash.”_

Dick’s breathing had become louder, sharp, ragged puffs in and out through his nose. Lew thought he’d touched the bottom earlier, felt all the remorse he could possibly feel, until he heard those labored breaths. 

_“I lied to you too,_ ” Dick said, his voice tight and thin. _“When I ignored you or turned away from you in bed. I cheated on you too. In my thoughts and in my -”_

Lew opened the door. Dick looked up from the letter. _“- heart,”_ he finished. 

“Who?” 

Dick’s hand holding the paper fell to his side and his shoulders sagged. “Does it matter?” 

Lew shrugged. “I guess not.” He looked into Dick’s eyes again. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Dick deflected, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Different guys.”

“Floyd Talbert.” Lew said it just like that, like a statement of fact. He supposed he’d always known. 

Dick’s brow furrowed in confusion. “How did you -”

Slowly, Lew lowered himself to sit on the floor, cross-legged, his back against the doorframe. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “Just the way you talk about him sometimes.”

Dick sat down on the floor across from him. “Are you mad?”

Lew dropped his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He shook his head, but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t thought for a moment that Dick had observed a policy of abstinence once their sex life had veered off the rails, and he’d never flattered himself to imagine that he played anything more than a cameo role in Dick’s fantasies. Still, he’d thought it might fill him with jealousy to hear Dick admit it himself. Whose mouth he’d imagined kissing, whose hands he’d longed to feel on his slick, hard body as he touched himself. But it just didn’t. 

“No,” he said finally. “I’m not mad.” 

Mostly, what he felt was a deep and haunting sense of loss for all the time he’d wasted. All those mornings he’d spent lying in bed waiting for his hangover to wear off, all those nights he couldn’t remember. The best years of their lives, gone forever. Spilling out like wine from broken bottles, leaving nothing but a dark stain to remind them of what they'd lost. That was what all of his amends boiled down to, in the end. _I’m sorry for wasting your time._

“You’re the one who should be angry,” Lew said. 

A choked laugh bubbled up from Dick’s chest. 

“What?” 

“I’ve been angry for five years,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?” 

Lew smiled sheepishly and looked down at his lap. “Alright,” he said, nodding. “That’s fair.” 

Dick’s smile faded. “I guess that explains a lot. Why I pushed you away. Pretended to be asleep when you came to bed.” 

“You were angry at me.” 

“Yeah,” Dick nodded. He folded the letter, running his thumb and forefinger along the crease. “I wanted to punish you.”

Lew tucked his chin and looked up at Dick from under his brow. “I think you went easy on me.” 

Dick didn’t chuckle or even smile at that. He just sat there looking at his letter. After a moment, he began rubbing his fingers back and forth across his brow and he appeared to be thinking carefully about what he should do. Then he looked up at Lew with worry in his eyes. 

“I think I ought to read you the rest of this.” 

Dick unfolded the letter again and took a deep breath, his lips forming a small, round ‘O’ as he blew it out. He began reading it again. 

_“There were nights when I hoped you wouldn’t come to bed at all. And those mornings when I found you passed out on the floor, I’d tell myself I was just going to let you lie there, but then I’d shake you awake and drag you to bed, and I was so angry at myself that I couldn’t just let you lie there.”_

Dick looked up and Lew saw that his eyes were wet and red around the edges. He seemed terribly reluctant all of a sudden, scared to say another word.

“Go on,” Lew said. “I can take it.” But he wasn’t sure that was the truth. Dick looked back down at the page. 

_“And there was always a moment right before you woke up when I thought -”_ Dick dropped his head back like he had a nosebleed, blinking and taking shallow breaths through his open mouth. Lew stared at him but Dick wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“What?” 

Dick finally looked at him then. He set the letter on the floor beside him. “I thought you might not wake up.” His eyes went wide, like he’d shocked himself more than anyone, and his voice fell to a reedy whisper. “And I was relieved. I thought that was the only way we could -” 

He broke off, and as the first tears finally spilled down his cheeks, Lew was struck by the beauty of his eyes, how the redness and the tears made the blue shine so boldly out of the grey. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Dick cry, and it always gave him an unsettled, disorienting sort of feeling, like the ground was shifting beneath his feet. He had that same feeling now, like he wanted to make it stop as soon as possible so the world could go back to normal again. At the same time, he couldn’t tear his gaze from the startling beauty of Dick’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, and there was something so pathetic and vulnerable about the way his chin quivered, in the thin strand of spit stretched between his lips, that Lew rose suddenly to his knees and closed the two feet of space between their bodies, folding Dick in his arms and threading his fingers through his hair as he cradled Dick’s forehead in the crook of his neck.

“I’m so sorry,” Dick said again, chanting it like a prayer. 

Lew brushed his lips against Dick’s cheekbone, right next to his ear. “I forgive you,” he murmured. “Do you forgive me?” 

Dick nodded against his shoulder. “Yes. I forgive you.” 

Later, they would read those letters to each other in their entirety, and then tuck them away in their nightstand drawers and never read them again. It would just be too painful. But that night, sitting in their pajamas on the kitchen floor, they welcomed the pain, wading in until the water was over their heads, Dick crying into Lew’s shoulder and Lew resolved to stay there and hold him until the shaking stopped.

* * *

Dick blew on his coffee, causing the surface to vibrate with little ripples that broke against the edge of the cup. A small part of him hoped that maybe, if he stared long enough into the murky blackness, he’d discover some idea about what he should do. But he knew that he was only stalling, putting off the reckoning he’d always known would come sooner or later. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. He took a sip and set the cup back in its saucer with a silvery clink that echoed off the marble floors. Apart from the clerk at the front desk and a woman in a black apron setting up the continental breakfast, he felt like he might be the only soul awake in all of New Orleans. 

A more cynical man might appreciate the irony, but Dick wasn’t cynical. He’d believed in Lew; he’d trusted him. Still, he couldn’t deny that it was rather ironic. After declining invitations to the reunions for years out of fear that Lew would only get drunk and cause a scene, to have him slip up so spectacularly, just when things were finally falling into place for them… It all just gave Dick an uncanny suspicion that he was being tested. Were he forced to grade his own performance of the past twelve hours, he’d be hard-pressed to rate himself higher than ‘Unsatisfactory’. 

_He’s your husband. You keep an eye on him._

Harry’s words as he’d stormed out were still echoing through his head, and he wondered if perhaps they contained a grain of truth. If he had to fight so hard not to feel responsible for Lew, maybe that was a sign that he was, and he should just accept it. It would certainly make things easier on them, if Dick could just give an order for Lew to obey. If Lew were the obedient kind. Or maybe if he hadn’t stopped going to the meetings in the city with Lew. But it was the middle of the growing season. There was too much work to be done for both of them to give up eight hours of their weekend, every week. Maybe he’d just let himself get too complacent, forgetting that Lew was still, would always be, an alcoholic, and that fact required a certain vigilance that Dick had gradually forgotten in his eagerness to get their lives back on track. 

He was doing it again. Another black mark on the report card. He shut his eyes tight to force his thoughts out of this pattern. This kind of thinking was like a giant hole in the sidewalk; he knew it was there, and he’d fall in anyway. Or he knew it was there, so he’d step gingerly around it, safe until the next time. Never did it occur to him to just avoid the damn street altogether. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him,” Harry had said as Dick was leaving the party, and he knew he should have told him not to bother, it wasn’t necessary. Lew could keep an eye on himself. Instead he’d taken it as insurance, and he went to bed secure in the knowledge that nothing too terrible could happen with his dependable little Irishman in charge. As he climbed into bed, his eyes landed briefly on their rings, which they’d left on the night table between the beds before they’d gone down to the party. It was the last thing he saw before he turned out the light, his smaller band tucked half-inside of Lew’s like nesting bowls.

He awoke a couple hours later to a scuffle outside the door, drunken curses and the rattle of the doorknob as someone tried repeatedly to insert the wrong key. He threw the blankets off and sprung to the door just as Harry was pulling the right key out of Lew’s trouser pocket. 

“Hey,” Lew said, frowning when he saw Dick. “You said we were going to the roof garden.”

“Yeah, well.” Harry walked him into the room and shrugged Lew’s arm off of his shoulder. “I lied.” 

Dick just stood there with his mouth open, blinking at Harry in astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said shortly. “I had an emergency.” 

“An emergency?” Dick sputtered. Lew was tromping around the room opening drawers and muttering about the ice bucket. 

Dick shook his head as he tried to figure out where to begin. He put his hands on his hips and spoke as calmly as he could.

“What. Happened.” 

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I go to take a phone call and when I get back, he’s doing shots with Guarnere and Heffron.” 

“Jesus Christ, Harry.” Dick pressed his fingers to his eyelids for a moment and then raked both hands through his hair, standing it up on end. 

“Zero!” Lew cheered from across the room. He’d found the ice bucket and was slapping it like a drum. He went to the window and opened it, shouting down to the street. “Zero! Hey! D’ya hear that? ZERO!” 

“What the hell is he talking about?” 

“I don’t know,” Dick mumbled tiredly. 

Lew stumbled back over to them, the ice bucket tucked into the crook of his arm like a baby. “I had one hundred and ninety-six days,” he slurred. He looked at his watch. “One hundred and ninety-seven. Know how many I got now?”

Harry just rolled his eyes and gave Lew a dismissive wave of his hand. Lew pointed at Dick. “How many do I got, baby?” 

Dick looked down at the garish fleur-de-lis pattern on the carpet. “Zero,” he said hoarsely. “You got zero, Lew.” 

“Zero,” Lew repeated sagely. He stepped closer to Dick and draped his arm around his neck. “Come on Dick,” he said. “Don’t be like that. We got no place to go but up.” The sharp fumes on his breath made Dick sick to his stomach. He squirmed out from under Lew’s arm and pushed him away. A momentary scowl contorted Lew’s face and then it melted back into a sleepy, crooked grin. He tried Harry instead. 

“Hey buddy, thanks for the lift. Here.” He held out a thick bronze disc. “For your trouble.” 

Harry took the coin and studied it. “What the fuck is this?”

“My six-month chip,” Lew said. “I don’t need it now.” 

Harry tried to give it back to him but Lew slipped it into his lapel pocket. “No really,” Lew said. “I want you to have it.” He was quiet for a moment, and then he leaned in close to Harry and stage-whispered in his ear. “I think Dick’s mad at me.” 

Dick took a deep, loud breath, trying hard not to lose his temper. He glared at Harry. 

“What happened to keeping an eye on him?”

“He’s _your_ husband,” Harry shouted, stepping away from Lew. “ _You_ keep an eye on him.” And then he stormed out. 

Dick took another sip of coffee and swirled the dregs at the bottom of his cup. When he looked up again, he saw Harry standing at the front desk, talking to the clerk. He turned, and Dick raised his hand in a little wave to catch his attention. 

“Thought I might find you here,” Harry said as he walked toward the table. His voice was nasally, scratchy. He sounded like he had a cold. 

“Best part of the day,” Dick said. He pointed toward the breakfast table. “You want a coffee?”

Harry shook his head. “Nah. I don’t think I have time.” 

“You going somewhere?” Just after Dick said it, he saw the suitcase in Harry’s hand. “Wait, you’re leaving? You’re not driving back with us?” 

“Flight’s at eight-thirty,” Harry said. He nodded toward the front desk. “They called me a cab.” 

“Harry, that’s not -” Dick heard his voice rise in insistence. “You don’t have to do that. I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. It wasn’t your fault.” 

Harry looked at him for a moment with his eyes narrowed in an unfamiliar expression of confusion and disgust. “It’s not -” he shook his head and blew an exasperated breath through his lips. When he looked back, Dick saw that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy underneath. “Not everything is about you.” 

Dick sat up higher in his chair. “What’s going on?”

Harry dropped his head back and sighed as he rolled it back and forth between his shoulders. He pulled the chair away from the table and dropped heavily into it. 

“It’s Kitty. She’s - “ He looked down at his fingers spread wide across the table. “She’s pregnant. Was pregnant. She lost it.” 

Dick sucked in a breath. Neither spoke for a moment. 

“Last night?”

Harry nodded. 

“Was that - oh god.” Dick covered his brow in shame. “That was the emergency.”

Harry nodded again. “Her sister took her to the hospital. Kids are with my brother-in-law.”

Dick took another deep breath, shaking his head as he sighed it out. “Harry. I am so sorry.” 

“Thanks.” Harry’s voice was strained. “I’m alright. I just wish I would have been there.” He cleared his throat and looked up at Dick. “We were really hoping for another girl, you know?”

Dick nodded faintly. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, just held the silence for him. 

Harry shrugged and shook his head, as though trying to shake away his sorrow like it was a sock in the jaw. He smiled distantly at Dick. “I guess there’s always next time.”

Dick nodded. “Yeah. That’s right. You’re young. You can try again.” 

Harry’s smile faded and he looked down at his watch. “I guess I’ll go wait for that cab.” 

They stood and walked together to the grand revolving doors. When they got there, Dick shook Harry’s hand, holding his elbow with his other hand. “Tell Kitty we’re - “ He stopped and looked into Harry’s eyes. “Tell her we love her.” 

“I will.” Harry let go of Dick’s hand. “Try not to be too hard on him. Same goes for you. It’s a hell of a thing you guys are doing.”

Harry turned to go but spun back around before he reached the doors. “I almost forgot.” He dug around in his pocket and then held something out to Dick. “Don’t let him give this away.” 

As he watched the revolving door sweep Harry out to the sidewalk, Dick held Lew’s sobriety chip in his hand and thought about the other gift Harry had given him. For years he’d been looking to his own actions to explain why Lew did what he did, because they were something he could control. But that was where he’d been wrong. Not everything was about him. Lew’s relapse hadn’t been caused by something Dick had done or failed to do, and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. The only reason Lew had slipped was because he’d chosen to take that drink. That was all. 

He walked back across the lobby to the bank of elevators feeling lighter, more sure of what they needed to do now. But when he got back to the room, Lew was gone.

* * *

The sand under Lew’s feet dipped and swelled, giving him the sensation that he was running through tar, but even if he wanted to stop, he knew he couldn’t. He had to keep running. Hours passed, and then he heard snow crunching under his boots and he couldn’t see anything for the fog. His throat was raw from sucking in deep breaths of the cold air and the sweat under his arms and collar had frozen, making his uniform stiff. His toes were numb, but still he ran on, compelled by an urge so deep and primal he’d be an arrogant fool to think he could understand it. All he could do was obey. 

He ran for days, weeks, catching an hour of sleep here and there while his legs carried him on. He didn’t remember it ever taking this long to find him, but he knew he wouldn’t stop until he did. This was the dream he’d been having for more than a decade; he ought to know its logic by now. The sun rose and set. Seasons changed. Rivers melted and swelled their banks. And Lew ran on, over bridges and along hedgerows. Across fields of fragrant heather and over desolate farms thick with the stench of burning flesh. It grew dark. His hair was wet. He tipped his head back and felt the rain lash his face, trickling down his cheeks like cold tears, bouncing off his eyelids. He heard noises - breaking glass, men’s voices, police alarms - and he knew he’d reached a town. The soles of his boots slipped off the cobblestones and he slowed down, careful not to trip. 

His footsteps took him to the door of a house. It was an imposing, gothic thing, medieval arches and heavy ironwork on the windows. He went inside, but it was dark and empty. “Hello?” he called. “Dick?” His voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling. 

He found himself standing at the foot of a grand staircase. Laying his hand on the ornately carved banister, he looked up and saw that the very top steps disappeared into the blackness of a hallway, and he knew, somehow, that he’d find what he was looking for somewhere down that dark hall. He mounted the stairs one slow, heavy step at a time, until finally he reached the top and was standing outside a closed door. 

He opened the door, and suddenly he was in the living room of his parents’ house in New Jersey. He recognized his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle, and a man he called Uncle Jack but who was really just someone his father knew from the country club. And of course, his mother and father. They must have been hosting a dinner party, because everyone was dressed up and tipping back highballs. And then he saw himself, a moon-faced ten year old with ears that stuck out like mainsails. He sat down next to his grandmother and whispered something in her ear, and then she told Florence, the girl who always came to help when his mother threw parties, to get Lewis a glass of something. She poured some sherry from a decanter into a tapered crystal glass and handed it to his grandmother, who then handed it to him and told him to run along. He closed the door. 

He moved down the hallway to the next door, and when he opened it a cold gust of wind hit him in the face. He was back at his parents’ house again, but this time he was standing on the veranda, looking down at himself at sixteen, passed out on the patio sofa. He grabbed himself by the lapels of his coat and shook. 

“Wake up, goddammit.” 

He shook harder, and then the teenaged Lewis scowled and cracked open his eyes. He groaned in agony and flopped back down on the sofa. 

“You’re drunk,” Lew said. 

“I’m sorry,” the boy replied. He covered his face with his hand and rolled onto his side. “I’ll never do it again.” 

Loathing and disgust rose like bile in his throat, and he stepped back through the door. 

He crossed to the other side of the hallway, and this time the door opened on a group of rumpled men in faded uniforms sitting around a stately oak table. A fire flickered in the hearth, lighting up the faces of his friends. If they were here, Dick couldn’t be far away. 

“He’s getting worse,” Lip said. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Speirs mumbled. “War’s over anyway.” He reached across the table to lay his hand on the pile of bills at the empty seat and slide them toward himself. 

Lip shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Shouldn’t someone tell Dick?”

Harry let out a clipped, sarcastic laugh. “What the hell do you think he’s gonna do about it?” 

Lip breathed a troubled sigh. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something.” 

“Let’s just play,” Harry said. He lit a cigarette and held it between his fingers as he pointed them accusingly at Speirs. “Now goddammit Ron, you’re not getting all of that. Leave him something.”

“That bastard’s so drunk he won’t remember what game we were playing, let alone - “

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” 

A terrifying sneer stretched slowly across Speirs’ face as a low chuckle rumbled from the tunnel of his throat. He took two dollars from the pile and set them in front of Lew’s place at the table, lovingly patting them with the flat of his palm. Lew turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. 

The next door opened into a small, windowless room. His boots shuffled across the dusty stone floor as a dank, basement smell filled his nose. Every wall was covered in wine racks, floor to ceiling, a perfect grid stretching up so high Lew couldn’t see where they ended. He stepped up close and laid his hand reverently on one of the bottles. When he pulled it out of its slot, he realized that the racks were filled not with wine bottles but the stout green port bottles of his beloved VAT 69. 

He closed his eyes and smiled, relief enveloping him like a warm bath. The stopper came out with a hollow pop and the sharp scent wafted up his nose and through his entire body, floating up to his brain, curling its soft fingers around his heart, seeping into the darkest rooms of his soul. But when he brought the bottle to his lips, he discovered it was empty. He dropped his head back and held the bottle over his mouth, but it was bone dry. He tossed it away and it shattered against the hard stone. He tried another bottle, holding it up to the weak light streaming through the open door to make sure it was full, but the same thing happened again. He tried another, and another after that, smashing them angrily as they all came up empty. 

He lost track of time. After he’d emptied one of the racks, he turned to work on the other wall and saw the carnage of jagged green shards rising around him like a flood. The glass shifted precariously under his feet and he held his arms out at his sides to balance as he crossed the room. Standing in front of another rack, he glanced briefly over his shoulder at the first and saw that it was full again, like he’d never even been there. Self-pity washed over him and he dropped his head in defeat. What the hell was he doing? 

Then he heard a quiet, still voice cutting through the chaos in his head: _You’re never going to find him here._

He stepped carefully across the carpet of glass and out the door, not stopping to look back. 

Out in the hall again, he walked past all the doors he’d already tried, a sick sense of hopelessness beginning to set in. Perhaps he’d be trapped in this hallway forever, searching endless rooms for something he knew in his heart wasn’t there. But he didn’t know what else to do, so he walked on, stepping deeper into the shadow of the hallway, until at last he found himself standing in front of a door that was different from the others. It was smaller, narrow like a closet, and where the others had knobs of heavy wrought iron, this door’s knob was made of smooth cut glass. He closed his hand over it and it warmed his stiff fingers. 

Inside was a pall of velvet darkness. The only object he could make out was a comfortable, care-worn sofa, upon which a man was sitting with his legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. The man looked steadily into Lew’s eyes and a wise, contented smile lit up his stubbled face.

“You’ve been looking everywhere for me.” 

Lew’s heart banged against his ribs as he realized he was looking into his own face. The man was him. He heard the words spill from his lips before his brain had even formed them.

“I found you.” 

Lew blinked in quiet wonder and studied this unlikely vision of himself. His hair was streaked all over with gray and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses magnified the lines around his eyes. 

“You got old,” Lew said. 

The man on the couch shrugged, his smile dimming to a subtle grin. “Happens to the best of us.” 

Lew peered into the darkness surrounding them. “Am I dead?” he asked. “Where are we?” 

The Lew on the couch tipped his head to the side. “You don’t recognize it?” 

Before he could reply, the lights began to rise and one by one, each familiar element of the room came into focus. The braided rug. The fireplace. The cribbage board. And Dick. His hair was a little thinner, his belly a little rounder, but other than that he looked just the same. Lover. Brother. Best Friend. Dick, as handsome as the day Lew first saw him, sitting there next to him on the sofa, peeling an orange. 

“He’s dreaming,” Dick said, and Lew thought he meant him until he saw that they were both looking down at the rug. His eyes followed their gaze and landed on a red flannel cushion, where a leggy white dog with light brown ears and a brown patch over one eye yipped and snuffled, his paws twitching in sleep. 

“Who’s that?” 

The older Lew looked back at him. “That’s Jake.” 

“Where’s Teddy?” 

He looked over Lew’s shoulder and a sentimental smile came into his face. “Teddy,” he said wistfully. Then Dick held up a section of the orange and he leaned to his side to catch it between his teeth. Lew felt the sweet explosion of juice in his own mouth. 

“Are we -” Lew began haltingly, his breath catching in his throat. “Is this -”

Lew watched as his older self turned his head toward Dick again and opened his mouth. He waited until he’d swallowed another section of orange before responding. 

“Is this what?” 

“Is this real? Is this what happens?”

Older Lew sat back against the cushion and stretched his arm across the back of the couch, behind Dick. He glanced around the room, his gaze taking in each individual object before landing on Lew’s again.

“That’s up to you.” 

Except for a thin strip of light knifing through the gap in the curtains, the room was still dark when Lew woke up. His head was a thick, aching fog. He lifted himself onto his elbows and looked around, at his suit lying in a rumpled heap on the floor, at the other bed, unmade and empty. Dick must not have slept with him, and Lew supposed he couldn’t blame him. He flopped back down onto his back and felt remorse wash through him like a cold wave. _Not again_ , he thought. _Oh please, not again_. He couldn’t do it anymore, the exhausting cycle of fear, resentment, remorse, that relentless clockwork he could never escape, that had tossed him around like a toy for so long. Fear, resentment, remorse, controlling his every action and reaction, poisoning his marriage, pulling him further and further away from the person he wanted to be. That happy old man in the dream with the gray hair and warm brown eyes. 

_That’s up to you_ , he’d said. 

Lew lay on his back for a few more minutes, looking up at the faint outline of a water stain on the ceiling. Then he rolled to his side and reached for the phone, dialing ‘zero’ for the front desk.

* * *

The streetcar would have been faster, but Lew decided he was in the mood for a walk. It was only about a mile back to the hotel, and anyway, he wanted to see the river. His steps took him down narrow streets, under the low balconies of ornate wrought iron for which this city was so iconic. Though it wasn’t yet nine, the air was already humid and close, fogging his sunglasses and spreading in wet circles under his arms. He walked by a fence thick with some tropical flower, its drooping yellow blossoms shaped like the bell of a trumpet. He stopped for a moment to inhale the sweet fragrance. That was one thing the South had over the North; their flowers smelled so much better. As he walked on, the floral perfume gave way to the smell of diesel from the garbage trucks rumbling through the alleys, and under that, the reek of dead fish coming from the water. 

He followed the dead fish smell until he reached the riverbank. The port was bustling, even at this early hour, even on a Sunday. Lew stood on the wharf for a while, smoking a cigarette and watching the longshoremen. It was hard to believe that the wide expanse of water sprawling out in all directions ahead of him was the same narrow, turbulent river he and Dick had crossed on their way to dinner that cold night in Minneapolis so many months ago. There it had crashed and rolled as it tumbled violently over the rocky falls. Here it was just a broad, placid lake, stretching lazily to the horizon like paint poured out on the ground. He thought for a moment about what made a river a river. Was it the water itself? The banks it flowed between? The destination it flowed toward? It seemed to him, in that solitary, decisive moment, that what defined a river was precisely the fact that it couldn’t be defined. It was ever moving, ever changing. This river was not the same river and this man was not the same man. 

When he got back to the hotel room, he found Dick standing in his shorts and shirttails, sliding a cheap little iron back and forth over the leg of his trousers. He looked up from the ironing board and their eyes met across the room for a brief moment before Dick went back to his trousers. Lew closed the door and sat down on one of the beds. 

“I don’t remember packing that.” 

“Laundry’s short-staffed. Housekeeping brought it up.” 

“That’s service.” 

Dick pointed the tip of the iron at the closet door. “I already did yours.” 

Lew looked at his suit hanging over the top corner of the open door, the trousers folded over the hanger, the jacket wrapped around them like it was hugging itself. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.” 

Dick’s voice dropped to a weary sigh. “Well, I had to do something.” 

He didn’t say any more but Lew understood his meaning. Something other than run out after him or spiral through another round of damage control. Something other than worry. 

“I left a note.” 

“Yeah.” Dick held up the iron and pressed a button on the handle. Little bursts of steam hissed from its shiny plate. “I saw.” 

Lew looked at the nightstand between the beds. The note was still there where he’d left it, slipped under their rings so Dick couldn’t miss it. _“Going to a meeting,”_ it read, and underneath that, in his neat, thin cursive, _“I’m sorry.”_

“How was it?” 

“Good,” Lew said simply. He thought of the circle of strangers on hard folding chairs, how they’d welcomed him with such warmth and understanding, despite not knowing him from Adam. Perhaps because of that. How he hadn’t even tried to hold it in, his voice breaking as he’d told them everything he could remember about last night, everything he’d worked so hard to repair and build up again, and what it had felt like to wake up and realize he’d burned it all to the ground. 

“It was good,” he said again. 

Dick nodded and reached into the pocket of his shirt. “Harry left this for you.” He tossed something toward Lew and it landed on the bedspread with a muted ‘plunk’. Lew looked at his sobriety chip but didn’t pick it up. 

“Is he too sore to give it to me himself?”

“No.” Dick pressed the iron hard against the cuff of his pants. “He left.” 

“What do you mean he left?” A sudden fear washed through him that he’d said or done something that he couldn’t remember, something awful and unforgivable. “What did I -”

“It’s nothing you did,” Dick said. “Kitty had a miscarriage.” 

“What?” His voice was barely a whisper. He covered his mouth with his palm and looked out the window for a moment as his brain struggled to comprehend what Dick had said. “I didn’t know she was pregnant.” 

“Neither did I.” 

“Should we send a card? Is that a thing you send cards for?” 

Dick sighed. “I really don’t know.” 

They were quiet for a little while, the only sound the swish of the iron.

“Dick.” Lew’s voice was plaintive, little more than a supplicating murmur. “Can we talk about this?” 

“I’m almost finished.” 

He said it so calmly but it only made Lew more anxious, having to sit there and watch him iron, trying to read from the careful movements of his hands whether he intended to offer Lew a lifeline or leave him for good this time. After a few more minutes, he set the iron upright and gave his trousers a brisk shake. He stepped into them, left leg first as always, tucked his shirttails neatly under the waist, and slid his belt through the loops. Finally, he took a seat on the bed opposite Lew, his face open in invitation. 

Lew looked into his eyes for a brief moment. He looked away when he felt the tears welling up again. He’d thought he might try to explain, to fit the pieces of last night into some kind of coherent narrative that they could look back on and know what to do next time, but all he could say was “I’m sorry”, the desperate plea of a condemned man who knows he's run out of second chances. "I'm sorry, Dick. I'm so sorry."

Dick's eyes drifted to the edge of the room. Lew sat forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Do you forgive me?” His heart began to beat faster as Dick continued to avoid his gaze. “Dick, please. Even if you don't. Please, just tell me.” 

Dick looked back at him, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “I’m working on it.” 

Lew shut his eyes and felt his shoulders sag in relief, bowing his head between them.

“I’d ask why you did it,” Dick said. “But I don’t think you even know that yourself.” 

It was the same question he’d posed at the meeting, thinking the answer must lie in some mysterious alchemy of nostalgia and shared trauma and hubris and that deep, fundamental deficiency he still hadn’t quite resolved. _“Why’d you do it?”_ a woman wearing a tasteful church dress had asked him. _“Why the hell do men do anything? You did it because you wanted to.”_

"Maybe I just wanted to feel like a normal man again. Just for a little while.” 

A pained wrinkle formed between Dick’s eyebrows and then faded away. "But you know better than that."

"I guess I forgot."

Lew's voice was clipped, his jaw tight as he spat a string of angry curses onto the carpet. Frustration and self-pity began to flare inside of him and he felt suddenly like such a child, raging against the childlike limits of his understanding. Across from him, Dick's stiff posture softened and he leaned forward to speak quietly to Lew.

“We knew there’d be slips.” 

“But I was doing so good." Lew's voice had begun to take on a sulky belligerence. "I got your hopes up and made you think I was better, and now I’ve fucked it all up.” His eyes met Dick's, his face stitched with a fierce and painful urgency. “I don’t want to do that to you again.” 

“Well they’re my hopes," Dick said, quietly defiant. "I can get them up if I want to.” 

Lew let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Why do you do it?" he mumbled tiredly. "Why do you put up with it?” 

Dick hummed thoughtfully. “I can’t raise Teddy on my own.” 

Lew laughed again, warmer this time. He placed his hands delicately on Dick’s knees, rubbing his thumbs over the hard lines of his kneecaps. “I suppose that’s as good a reason as any.” 

Dick sat forward and put his hands on either side of Lew's face, tracing his thumbs along the lines of his jaw. “And I love you.” He smiled faintly, his gaze floating down Lew's face, lingering at his mouth. He leaned forward and kissed him. 

“But why,” Lew whispered. He rubbed his cheek against Dick’s, his eyes still closed. “How can you…”

Dick pulled away. Lew opened his eyes. 

“Because I want to,” Dick shrugged. “Because I'm good at it." 

The realization hit Lew like a golden bullet, the one with his name on it. _That’s up to you._ Maybe that was all it boiled down to, in the end. Maybe that was the answer. He simply had to make a decision. Staying in love. Staying sober. Believing in God. They were all choices he could make, not just once but thousands of times. Every day he could wake up and choose not to drink. To stay in love. To be the man Dick deserved. Commitments he'd renew every day, every hour if he had to. He might slip and fall, but he'd stand back up and make the same choices all over again.

"I want to be good at loving you too."

"You are."

"I want to be better." Lew's voice grew stronger, the words coming easier now. "I'm going to be better."

Dick nodded. Lew reached across the space between them to take Dick's hands in his. He looked into Dick's eyes for a silent moment.

“But I can’t promise I’m never going to drink again.” 

Dick looked down at his lap. “Yeah. I know." He took a long, deep breath. "And I can’t promise I’m not going to leave you for it someday. But honey… “ Dick squeezed Lew's hands tighter. “It’s not going to be today.”

Lew exhaled a breath it felt like he'd been holding for years.

“Are you going to drink today?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Dick brought his face so close to Lew's that their foreheads nearly touched. “Then that’s all that matters. Let’s not go borrowing trouble from tomorrow.” 

Suddenly, Lew could see them all there in Dick's pale gray eyes, all the days they'd take one at a time. Their life together, stretching out ahead of them in an endless, rolling river. No beginning and no end, just flowing, just moving along, drifting with the current. All he had to do was wade in and let it take him. 

“So what do we do now?”

Dick let go of Lew’s hands and looked at his watch. “Father’s holding an ecumenical service at ten. We could just about make it.”

“An ecu-what?” 

Dick smiled. “It means it’s for everyone.” 

“Alright. Yeah, okay.” Lew nodded, as if talking himself into it. “I’ll go to church with you. It’ll be my second time today, but no one’s keeping score.” 

Dick’s smile grew wider and he shook his head in a combination of wonder and affection. Lew slapped his thighs and made a move to stand, but Dick stopped him. He picked up their rings from where they lay on top of Lew’s note.

“You sure about that?”

“When have we ever let that stop us?” 

“It might be our last reunion.” 

Dick put on his ring, pushing it over his knuckle. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.” He held up Lew’s ring between the pads of his thumb and index finger. “How about you?” 

Lew nodded, blinking at Dick through a misty sheen of sudden emotion. “Yeah,” he said quietly. 

It was a chance he’d always been willing to take. Thirteen years ago, when they’d graduated from OCS and he’d asked Dick what was next. Six years later, that sunny October day when Dick had taken him for a drive upstate to see about a little piece of land. It was a chance he’d keep taking, every day, for the rest of his life. Because it was worth it. Dick's love was worth everything. 

He held out his hand and let Dick slide the ring onto his finger.

**Author's Note:**

> "The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot." 
> 
> The title is from James Joyce's _Dubliners_ and is the first line of _The Lost Weekend_ (1944) by Charles Jackson, which is an incredible and harrowing story of addiction and informed a lot of the themes in this.
> 
> Also, did you know this fic [has a playlist?](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7AeoeLeFOdmBlzrWBcHTJU)
> 
> [Here is a website](http://www.houstonlgbthistory.org/ONE.html) with most of the covers of ONE (the magazine where they find the ad for the gay AA group). Please ignore the fact that the one Dick has hanging in their closet didn't actually come out until 1958 ;)
> 
> Finally, THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading this whole thing. I never anticipated it would get this long, but the more I researched, the more I realized how much needed to be included to get them to the place where I wanted to leave them.


End file.
